 
# A NOVEL

Making Mars

## M. Vindobona

Aquinicum Press

Copyright © 2015 by **M. Vindobona**

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Aquinicum Press

http://www.AquinicumPress.com

Publisher's Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

**Making Mars/ M.Vindobona**. -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-1519785947

To my sons

## CONTENTS

(1) 7 Days after Dirk's Mars arrival: Emergency – package off course

(2) Day 7 0955 Initiating Package Retrieval

(3) Day 7 Remembering back 18 months ago

(4) Day 7 1230 Uncomfortable Delivery to Bureaucrat

(5) Day 7 1236 The Director

(6) Day 7 The Sergeant and Director 5 months ago

(7) Day 7 The Director recalls her motivation

(8) Day 7 1241 The Director's New Plan

(9) Day 7 1236 CentripGym

(10) Day 3 The Crane Farm

(11) Day 3 Meeting Radius

(12) Day 5 Lifeguards

(13) Day 8 Another day at the Crane Farm

(14) Day 9 0835 Pre-Delivery Brief

(15) Day 9 1130 Atmosphere

(16) Day 10 Vampirism on Mars

(17) Day 10 Rock Climbing

(18) Day 11 Dirk's Hacker Credentials and another package goes astray

(19) Day 12 Fire!

(20) Day 12 1630 A Maker makes a Martian home

(21) Day 20 Home Revelation

(22) Day 21 0830 Making Crane Mods

(23) Day 21 1030 Injury

(24) Day 21 1305 A Long Heavy Hike

(25) Day 21 1445 Dad Helps

(26) Day 21 1600 Package delivery

(27) Day 21 1700 The Sergeant and Director discuss Butterflies

(28) Day 21 1630 Problem discovery

(29) Day 21 2100 A cage mystery

(30) Day 21 2300 Radius' Data Analysis

(31) Day 22 0015 The Caper

(32) Day 22 0730 The Sergeant's Late Response

(33) Day 22 0900 Arrested

(34) Day 22 1030 Judicial Proceedings

(35) Day 22 1200 After the Trial

(36) Day 22 1530 Punishment Delivered

(37) Day 22 1730 Dirk makes a Swimming Proposal

(38) Day 23 1400 Dirk goes Hiking

(39) Day 23 1700 Cave Awakening

(40) Day 24 0930 Dirk returns home with news and is disappointed

(41) Day 24 1130 Government Visit and Donation

(42) Day 24 1230 Director outlines the Production Plan

(43) Day 25 1830 Yakisoba and Mushubi

(44) Day 26 1400 Dirk shows Mandy the pictures

(45) Day 27 0925 Fuel Transfer and a Muncher

(46) Day 28 0800 Surveying a Justification for returning to the Cave

(47) Day 28 1538 Return to Tharsis Minutus

(48) Day 28 1830 Duck and Discussion

(49) Day 29 1030 The Director's New Tasking

(50) Day 29 The Drill

(51) Day 29 1355 Camera Retrieval

(52) Day 29 1555 Dirk Returns with Camera Gear

(53) Day 29 1705 Pouch Delivery

(54) Day 29 1710 Supplies for the next phase of the Director's Plan examined

(55) Day 29 1810 Examining the Evidence

(56) Day 29 1850 Revelation

(57) Day 29 1941 Dirk Receives Great News that is the Worst he's ever Heard

(58) Day 29 1900 The Director and Sergeant Hatch a New Plan

(59) Day 29 2125 (19 hours and 35 minutes to impact) Dirk Struggles to Counter the Disaster

(60) Day 29 2300 (18 hours) The Idea

(61) Day 30 0100 (17 hours) Tom Solves the Problem

(62) Day 30 0900 (7 hours) An Unwelcome Call from City Hall

(63) Day 30 1015 (5 hours 45 minutes) Dirk, Radius and T2 arrive at the Ship

(64) Day 30 1212 (3 Hours 45 minutes) Dirk Restored

(65) Day 30 1300 (3 hours 15 minutes) Mod Delivery

(66) Day 30 1315 (2 hours 45 Minutes) Crane Combination and New Challenges

(67) Day 30 1430 (1 hours 30 Minutes) Dirk's Horrible Idea

(68) Day 30 1450 (1 hours 10 minutes) Implementing an Unpalatable Solution

(69) Day 30 1515 (45 minutes) Awakening

(70) Day 30 1557 (3 Minutes) The Comet Arrives

(71) Day 30 1555 Exploration at Tharsis Minutus

(72) Day 30 1600 (0 minutes) MegaCrane Water Balloon Intercept

(73) Day 30 1602 An Unwelcome Sight at Tharsis Minutus

(74) Day 30 1605 Discerning the Outcome

# (1) 7 Days after Dirk's Mars arrival: Emergency – package off course

"This is not making me happy," Dirk, the only kid on Mars, thought as the alarm continued to sound. The alarm blasted in his helmet, transmitted over the Crane Farm Wi-Fi network. "Emergency - package astray, package astray. Alert Level 2. Take cover immediately." Alert level 2 meant that it was a small package that was off course. Off course was not a huge deal – it only meant that he had a long hike to go retrieve it. Unless of course the area of uncertainty of the landing overlapped with his location, which would entail that the landing (or high speed crash) could be bad, very bad for anyone (well, he was the only one around) in the vicinity due to the non-negligible possibility that he and the package would meet with a splat.

"Oh no, not again," Dirk grunted. He quit pushing the hydraulic lifter he was using to move the cargo the Sky Crane had just lowered to the Martian surface and started running. He'd left the Crane where it had landed at the edge of the landing zone. Due to the imminence of Space Elevator completion, the Crane was now a heap of junk, not worth the cost in fuel to re-launch. He'd push it over to the holding area or one of the garages dug into the other side of the hill north of the landing zone plateau later. He passed the small sandbag blast shelter and kept running. His dad had told him that unless he could see the package he should continue to the shelter on the City side of the hill.

The _off course_ warning sounded whenever a package deviated more than 1% from its projected track. This made for not infrequent false alarms. He could usually bring the Crane back on course, after they were displaced by high altitude winds, but sounding the alarm when the package deviated by 1% was a necessary safety precaution – even a near miss could kill.

"But we don't have any other deliveries scheduled for today, so what set off the alarm?" he wondered.

"It must be a special delivery package, off course and off schedule, as usual," Dirk thought. They were often uncontrollable, and this one was completely out of tolerance and on its way at 3000 miles per hour.

Although the WiMAX network provided direct communications with Radius, out of habit he yelled, "Radius, come on!"

"Enroute," said Radius' voice in his ear. "We will reach the shelter in 45 seconds at our current rate." Radius was 100 meters to the west, at about the same level on the slope as Dirk.

An unpleasant hum, increasing in volume and pitch indicated the air search radar, which activated when the "conditions normal" signal was lost from the orbital control point, had detected the package. In addition to helping him guide the deliveries to the landing zone, it also indicated the proximity of the errant package so the workers (worker, Dirk) could take emergency response actions consisting primarily of "Run and Hide!"

The sound increased in volume with package proximity. Dirk wasn't sure it was an effective signal. It always distracted him - he wanted to rip his headphones out for two reasons. One, it was super annoying, and two, it made communicating with Radius difficult, and as the package drew closer, impossible, unless they were in the same shelter and could speak normally. He couldn't even mute it.

"Xrrrrrr", the sound increased in frequency as he crested the hill and turned onto the path to the shelter. The sound indicated that the package was still over five miles away which equaled at least 80 seconds before impact. Of course, that five miles could be anywhere on a hemisphere defined by the Crane Farm at the center. The package might be past and opening, on its way to landing ten miles or more away from the Crane Farm, activating the alarm only because its course bisected the five kilometer buffer zone around the landing zone. Alternatively, it could be heading for a spot Dirk was soon to occupy - at this point it was still too soon to tell.

"Radius is going to beat me there! No way!" Dirk thought as he sped up.

"This one is fairly close – within three km," Dirk said to himself, judging by the pitch and frequency of the alarm sound as he hopped the four foot high sandbag wall outside the entrance and scooted into the shelter. His dad had built the L shaped shelter into the side of the berm before Dirk arrived. After four feet it made a 90 degree turn to the left for another four feet or so - and that was the extent of the shelter – barely big enough for two people. The 90 degree turn provided additional protection by allowing a person to duck behind the corner, thus avoiding potential impact debris.

"Dirk, whenever you are there, I want you to keep digging it deeper – every inch increases your margin of safety and will have a significant impact on your comfort by giving you more room," his dad had said repeatedly.

Dirk had a different idea of shelter comfort. "The deeper I dig," he said to himself, "The deeper I'll get buried if things go wrong." As a result, the time necessary to work on the shelter never materialized – he always had something else more important to do (even as he sat in the shelter). As someone who loved swimming, rock climbing and generally enjoying life outdoors, cowering in a cave was not his idea of fun. Yet he realized that the deeper he dug the range of impact he'd survive widened.

"To my mind," he said to himself the last time he'd had to take shelter from a wayward package, "There are far too many situations like this on Mars, in which taking a specific action both increases and decreases my survival potential."

As the sound reached its excruciating peak Dirk removed his helmet. "Radius, here we are again."

"Yes, indeed," said Radius.

"30 second to impact," said the alarm.

"They provide the 30 second countdown so you know how much longer the movie of your life has to run," Dirk said to himself – but ten seconds later the alarm stopped.

"Gotta love that accuracy," Dirk said.

"Ching ching ching" – the "package landed/all clear" tone sounded. He could hear it issue from the helmet he held in his lap, his back against the far wall at the top of the L.

"Radius, our fiery death has been averted for another day," Dirk said.

"Indeed," agreed Radius. "Now we find the package."

Dirk groaned. "And I was about to eat lunch."

# (2) Day 7 0955 Initiating Package Retrieval

He and Radius climbed out of the shelter, and Dirk rushed up the berm, scanning the landscape for the package. Happy to see a cloud of dust indicating the landing area not too far away, Dirk asked, "Radius, are you getting any location data?" Although he could pull up the display on the Book himself, he wanted to get a good bearing on the dust cloud before it dissipated in the Martian breeze.

While waiting for Radius' response, Dirk, keeping his eyes on the faint puff of dust that looked like a mini tornado fading away to the Northwest, started off at a fast walk.

"Radius, do you have the package at about 030 degrees, 4 clicks?" he yelled back to Radius.

"Yes, Dirk, that is about it. 033 at 3.7 kilometers," Radius said.

An hour and a half later, as he and Radius finally reached the package, his vague annoyance at having to race out to get the package (he had to get back for the next Crane arrival at 1500) became full-blown anger.

"Radius," he yelled angrily. "It's a 'diplomatic' pouch!"

"Crud," said Dirk, as he picked up the pouch. These pouches were the worst of all packages to have to retrieve for two reasons. First, the shielding necessary to render them impervious to all forms of electromagnet snooping made them awkward to carry. Second, since no one except government officials knew what they contained, their weight was unrestricted which meant that they were often very heavy.

In addition, the pouches were designed with only one large handle on the top. Back on Earth they were only carried for short distances – from a car to a building, or from a plane to a cart to a car. The deficiencies of the traditional form were not a major hindrance to diplomatic operations.

But the design sure hindered Dirk's operations.

Radius interrupted his whining by facing away from the bag, grabbing the heaviest, handleless end and saying, "Let's go."

Dirk sighed and picked up the handle. Radius led the way back toward the Crane Farm.

Though annoying at times, Radius was stronger, faster and more versatile than a human. Now for example, he was comfortably walking forward with his arms spun around to the rear and his "hands" forming a wide stable platform on which the heaviest part of the diplomatic pouch was secured. Two humans would have had to walk sideways carrying the heavy bag, or use a fireman's carry to lug it around. Although Dirk had complained about having to carry the awkward package, Radius was doing 80% of the work.

"What do you think the bag contains?" Dirk asked Radius.

"No idea," said Radius. "I lack the data necessary to make an informed guess."

Annoyed by this classic robotic response, Dirk said, "I think it is goodies for the Sergeant. But why not wait for the ship next month?"

Radius didn't respond.

The walk back took much longer than the walk out, due to the need for detouring around the crevasses.

"Hey Radius, let's stop here. I'll run and get a wheelbarrow."

"Ok," said Radius. By Radius' calculation, the utility of expending energy to walk all the way to the Crane Farm to return with the wheelbarrow made no sense. However, if Dirk, with his lower per watt energy cost wanted to do it, he had no objection.

Once at the Crane Farm they loaded the diplo pouch onto a stripped down Crane for the trip into the City. Before Dirk arrived Radius made all deliveries to the City using the wheelbarrow. However, the delayed onset muscle soreness in Dirk's arms and shoulders the day after his first delivery hike to the City motivated Dirk to develop a better process.

That afternoon, while Radius was working in the Control Tower, Dirk had "modified" a Crane to suit his purposes. By removing the rocket engines and control systems he was left with only the chassis and wheels. The Cranes were designed for on ground movement after landing. Although it still weighed more than the wheelbarrow, pushing the stripped down Crane was much easier on the hands, shoulders and back than holding up the wheelbarrow for the entire hike to the City.

Radius had not been pleased. "Dirk, those are Company property. Did you get prior authorization to modify it? Were proper procedures followed?"

Radius' question infuriated Dirk. "It's too late now," he snapped rudely, and had walked home.

They hadn't discussed it since, and Radius continued to use the wheelbarrow while Dirk, when it was his turn, pushed the stripped down Crane.

# (3) Day 7 Remembering back 18 months ago

"My heart hasn't pounded like that since the last Augmented Reality (AR) Games race – I really thought it was going to hit us," he said to himself as he and Radius walked toward the City to make the delivery.

The residual effects of the adrenaline filled sprint to the shelter reminded him of the chain of events that brought him to Mars.

Back on Earth he'd been a globally ranked Augmented Reality Games competitor. The Augmented Reality (AR) Games combined Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, the Decathlon and triathlons with augmented reality. The actual physical movements performed by the athletes were instantly rendered as unreal physical feats in an immersive virtual reality environment for spectators. The AR Games, by embedding the lift and physical challenges in a rich, extremely dynamic synthetic environment had created one of the most popular sports on Earth. The number of professional sports was difficult to keep track of, but the Games had a good ranking in the global ratings across all media platforms.

In the AR Games a synthetic environment is rendered and displayed over the stairclimbing machine, for example, serving as the platform upon which that component of the competition took place. While the athlete sees the actual steps (in order to climb them effectively) the viewer sees a complex mountain or exterior of a skyscraper on which the athlete appears to move.

He thought back to the conversation he'd had with his dad after his final international race on Oahu.

"Dad, it was great, I was behind going up the Stairway to Heaven, but not too far behind. As I paused to catch my breath and check out Kanehoe Bay to the north, I counted only about 10 people ahead of me – no problem, because I knew what was at the top," Dirk explained.

"The drones accompanying the athletes fed unaltered live feeds to viewers who watched us climb the narrow stairs up the side of the Ko'olau Range. The Pterosaurs, added for visual interest, distracted me with their swooping, but for the most part it was a WYSIWG (What You See Is What You Get) situation. The AR Games organizers had added some obstacles and bars on and around the old Navy radar station at the top of the mountain. The course ran over the radar station, and then onto the second of the electrical towers, disconnected of course, with enough holds and bars added to make climbing them possible. I passed four of the people while doing parkour around the radar station, three on the run to the tower, they had not paced themselves adequately up the Stairway to Heaven, but I was a little surprised by a challenge hidden in a little valley right before the second transmission tower. The event consisted of a serious of thrusters - you know, the squat to overhead with a 95 pound barbell - plus muscle ups."

"Thrusters are not your best event," his dad said, concerned.

"No, they are not, and two of the people I passed caught up to me before I finished. But I reached the final muscle up station –"

"Your best event!" his dad interrupted.

"Yeah," Dirk smiled into the phone, "and thanks to the muscle ups I was able to pass the two people in front of me and start on the final climb of the tower first."

"Outstanding!" said his dad.

"Both passed me though," Dirk said.

"Oh," said his dad.

"But," Dirk continued excitedly, "They were in the 20-25 age group, so I still won my division!"

"Wow! I'm so glad to hear it. Congratulations!" his dad said. Dirk waited for him to say something else, but there was only silence on the line.

To fill the void, Dirk said, "Yeah, it was great. Wish you could have been here."

"Yeah, I wish I could have been too – the thing is, I had to go to the New Mexico spaceport unexpectedly."

"Why?" Dirk asked.

"This is hard to say, but due to circumstances beyond my control, really anyone's control, the timeline for Mars has been accelerated."

"What does that mean?" Dirk asked.

"I'm heading to Mars much earlier than expected..." his dad said.

"Oh. When?" asked Dirk, his thoughts still predominately focused on the race.

"Tomorrow," his dad said, "And I want you to come with me."

Dirk didn't know what to say. He'd known that his dad might go to Mars, in the next few years, maybe, but it had always been something in the far future – not tomorrow.

"Uh," Dirk mumbled.

"You won't leave tomorrow – there isn't enough time to get you to the spaceport and I need to get things ready on Mars anyway. So you won't follow for about a year, but I wanted to talk to you now because after tomorrow our conversations are subject to a 14 minute delay due to the distance."

"Uh," was still the best Dirk could come up with.

"I know this is a lot to spring on you, and you don't have to decide now." His dad stopped and turned away from the phone to talk to somebody – from the mummer of voices Dirk could hear it sounded like something had gone wrong.

"Sorry about that, son. I hate that it has all come about this way. We've got to go. There is a bit of an emergency. Congratulations on the race, and I love you. I'll try to call you again later, if I can break away. Bye."

Stumbling over a rock brought his attention back to Mars. "Why?" he said to himself, looking at Radius who walked along unconcerned with such problems. "Why did I choose to come here?"

He stared out into the cold desert, the angle of the sun hitting the dust in the atmosphere making everything look vaguely blue.

"I guess it's because I dreaded school more than I dreaded Mars. The prospect of another 5 years of college plus 4 of graduate school - at least - was too boring to contemplate. If leaving school required leaving the planet, leaving the planet is worth it! I can educate myself better without wasting hours a day in school anyway," he'd said to himself.

"But," he thought, as he looked at the sand, different colors and craters interrupting the smoothness of the view to the horizon, "Did I make the right choice?"

Leaving the AR Games behind remained one of his biggest regrets – kind of silly considering everything else he'd left - his friends, family and food! The food on Mars was ok, but was like going camping every day – it was good when you were hungry, but was not anything special in itself.

He was on track to get scholarships for college as a Games Athlete, and in addition had been approached by sponsors about going Pro. Indeed, he didn't have to choose between the two - he could both take the scholarships and go Pro, since the student athletes rules did not forbid, indeed, encouraged creating multiple revenue streams. He wouldn't have been instantly rich, but he could have had his own apartment (no roommates to hassle with, no family telling him what to do every hour of the day) and with enough money to train and travel to events without sweating every Century ($100).

"Now I'm on Mars delivering packages. Great."

# (4) Day 7 1230 Uncomfortable Delivery to Bureaucrat

Stopping in front of City Hall, they picked the diplomatic pouch up from the wheelbarrow and Radius knocked on the door. It slid open, and they entered the security/weather vestibule and paused while they were searched. Dirk's dad thought such a scan was pointless, but the Director, the Government official recently arrived on Mars insisted on it to preserve what she called the "sanctity" of the space. "It puts people in the right frame of mind for dealing with their representatives," the Director said. By that of course she meant to say that it reminded them of the omnipotence of the surveillance state.

She thought people should approach Bureaucrats as if doing so were a privilege, an entering into the presence of someone superior. The citizens on Mars thought they were merely entering the presence of someone in their employ to perform very specific – and in many cases unnecessary - tasks. This attitude differed from those on Earth, where Government was considered, due to the propaganda of the government work organizations, as primary, and the citizens a mere resource generator to support the governmental apparatus.

In spite of the Company's best efforts, the Earth government was having some success in exporting their view of the citizen/government relationship. The Director represented the Government bureaucratic order, and the Sergeant, the only other government official (so far) the Government Law.

The inner doors slid open. Dirk and Radius walked in with the heavy package. "Delivery sir," said Dirk. "Where should we put it?"

The Sergeant looked up from his videos when the inner door opened. The security scan carried out by the building was fully automatic.

Although it did little for his self-esteem, he accepted his function in the system. "I'm basically a tripwire," he'd said to himself on seeing the setup for the first time. "Someone with ill intentions will attack me. The attack will alert the Building, and the Building will raise the security posture, thus protecting the Director, the high value unit."

Therefore, although unnecessary from a security perspective, he'd justified his deployment to Mars in two ways. "First, the off world salary increase will dramatically improve my standard of living. Second, let's be honest. I'll never promote on Earth due to my lackadaisical attitude toward work. Why work hard if I get paid the same no matter what?"

Since the security system failed to indicate a threat (due to perspiration, heart and breathing rate, or detection of actual weapons) he resented having now to answer the question. "Actually," he thought to himself, "after months on Mars, I'd love the excitement a real threat - though not too real - would create."

Unfortunately for him, he'd realized too late that even with his, by Earth standards, astronomical salary, there was 1) little to buy on Mars and 2) even his salary couldn't cover the shipping costs of the luxuries he could now easily (absent the shipping costs) afford. Therefore, after the pleasure at the "vacation" that was the trip out to Mars faded he had become increasingly miserable. The formulation of various schemes to get back to Earth had begun to compete with video viewing for his attention, but he'd not thought of any and was slowly resigning himself to a life only slightly less miserable (due to the lighter workload) than what he'd left on Earth.

Until two months ago, when the Director had changed his attitude through her broad interpretation of the categories of goods eligible to ship via Diplo pouch. Neither one of them cared that they were as a result of this interpretation delaying, in a not insignificant way, the construction of the Space Elevator. Elevator completion would increase the quality of life of the entire City in the long run. However, they considered increasing their standard of living much more important.

The Director had explained her idea quickly. "Anything a government official wants is by definition for Government use. Therefore, we can use the free shipping of the Diplomatic pouches required by the agreement the Government had imposed on the Company to deliver anything we, the Government representatives, need or want."

The Sergeant found nothing objectionable in her logic.

It had caused him a minor problem however, a problem he was happy to have. He'd been forced to begin storing his stuff in his office and even the few jail cells– his house was rapidly filling up as a result of the expansion of the "Diplomatic" goods category.

The indifference he had shown Dirk and Radius was an inauthentic pose, a screen behind which he cloaked the (like a kid before his birthday) giddiness with which he was anticipating this pouch – it contained, in addition to the supplies for the Director's special project, a selection of his favorite foods as a reward to himself for a year on Mars.

The thought of inviting a few friends over (Martian friends) had occurred to him a week ago. However, upon further consideration he decided he'd enjoy the food more free of the pressure to share.

"What if someone selected one of his delicacies and didn't care for it?" he thought. "They'd be embarrassed to be seen wasting such rare and valuable food (a major sin on Mars but something done habitually on Earth). As a result, they would feel bad, I'd feel bad for them, and the lost opportunities to enjoy the goodies. The others, who did like it, would be angry. The party could therefore actively disrupt the delicate social climate – better to eat it all myself."

"Hold on," he said, returning his focus to his glasses mounted screen. "Query Director – where should the diplomatic pouch be placed?" The two possible answers were obvious, but asking this was an easy way of notifying the Director it had arrived while at the same time getting direction so he could tell Dirk where to put it (storage or Director's office) without having to carry the pouch himself.

"My office," the Director said and the words appeared across the Sergeant's screen. He paused and stood – the movie's climatic scene had begun, but he'd watched it before and would again. Although he'd started sleeping around 9 hours a night since arriving on Mars (a persistent effect of the trip hibernation or a result of boredom he wasn't sure) a lack of media consumption time was not one of his challenges. With an hour for each meal, and 30 minutes a day for his official record keeping tasks (which included a nightly check), securing the building after hours and opening it before the Director arrived in the morning, he had 11 hours a day for video games, movies and TV. If he only had more people to impress, he'd be very happy. He'd sent videos home to his siblings (who he didn't like) but couldn't enjoy their envy from 140,000 miles away. Video calls were asynchronous and expensive and anyway he had no desire to waste his money on calling them.

"Take it to the Director's office," he said to Dirk and Radius, without looking up.

Dirk and Radius picked up the package and headed down the passageway to the office without speaking. They'd been there before, and knew getting in and out quickly was the best policy.

The door to the Director's office was already open and they walked in and stopped, awaiting further instruction. The Director glanced and them and said, 'Right there is fine. That is all."

Not waiting for a "Thank you," Dirk and Radius left hurriedly in order to avoid an unwanted tasking from the Director. She couldn't officially order them to do things, but tended to ask "favors" of people. As in all frontier communities, people were generous with their helpfulness. However, the Director never provided assistance in return – indeed, the only power to which she had access was punitive and she chose not to develop other sources based on mutual assistance. Both by function and inclination she extracted value for herself from every interaction – never added value to the process, whatever that process was.

"Tom's place?" Dirk asked Radius as they headed down the street, walking quickly in spite of their unusually active day, away from City Hall.

"Sure," said Radius.

# (5) Day 7 1236 The Director

The Director was pleased – the essential equipment for Phase One of her special project arrived much sooner than anticipated – the Senior Directors must have liked her idea.

"Get in here!" she said over the system to the Sergeant immediately after Dirk exited the building.

The Sergeant knocked at the door to her office and entered. He had to look up slightly at her when he walked in – her desk was on a platform, a dais of sorts. The elevation, a standard design feature of all government officials (of the high ranks of course) was modeled on a courtroom in order to remind citizens that all government officials stood in judgment of their every action.

The Sergeant still remembered the rage with which she exploded when she'd first seen her office.

"What is this!" she'd screamed. "This isn't a dais, it's a step!"

The Sergeant admitted the platform was quite low. More a suggestion than a statement, it provided only a nuance of positional authority. She both yearned for, and felt entitled to as only government official on the entire planet, other than the miscellaneous inspections functionaries like the Sergeant who in her eyes barely counted, the visual sledgehammer of dominance a large dais generated.

Foolishly, the Sergeant had spoken up. He'd arrived a month before the Director, and had actually signed off for the building.

"The Company claims the low elevation was due to rationing in the building process..."

"I don't believe that," the Director snapped back, as if it was his fault. "They could have figured out a way to gain at least another foot or so."

In truth, she was right, but the Company's priorities and hers differed.

He wondered if she hadn't thought of the Diplo pouch idea as a way to get revenge for the inadequate dais.

# (6) Day 7 The Sergeant and Director 5 months ago

More "effective" utilization of the requirement the Company pay for 24 Diplo pouches a year was only the first of the Director's great ideas. She'd called him into her office about a month after she'd arrived.

"Are we adequately compensated for serving on this desolate wasteland?" she asked him.

"No ma'am!" the Sergeant responded, not sure where she was going with this.

She paused, peering intently at him. After at least a minute, (which felt like 10 as she stared into his eyes in an extremely awkward moment) she said, "We can be honest with each other, yes?"

"Yes ma'am!" he said, feeling uncomfortable.

"How many robots are here on Mars?" she asked.

"About 50 or so, but half of those have broken and are junk. Too expensive to repair, at least until the Elevator is fully operational."

"Right," she said. "Repairing robots is expensive, and they tend to break in these austere environments. You may have heard that back on Earth I ran into some issues concerning Robot repair parts."

The Sergeant had, but kept his face a blank hoping to avoid revealing his knowledge with a smirk.

The Director continued. "Robots, like all mechanical things, break occasionally. Not every part is replicable through 3D printing on Luna, the asteroids, or Mars. This means that some local storage of parts is necessary. Though there are not many robots on Mars, there are sufficient numbers that maintaining a stockpile of spare parts is prudent."

She paused and looked intently at him before continuing. "My great insight was to declare Robot parts as 'essential resources'. Although the Company objected, the government, following my advice, did it anyway, using precedents set on Luna when NASA was still lead agency in the latter part of the last century."

This was all a bit beyond the Sergeant's grasp, but he nodded as if he were following the discussion.

Not convinced he understood, the Director continued to explain. "The Government can control the distribution of 'essential resources'. Robot repair parts are of course expensive on Earth, and are obviously even more expensive off Earth - beyond Earth orbit the transport costs increase geometrically with distance. Thus refurbished Robot spare parts, repaired in lunar facilities, are dramatically less expensive, although not as good as new and intended only for emergency use until new parts arrived from Earth."

"As you pointed out, there are not many robots on Mars. Since robot parts are 'essential resources', I made a decision in the best interest of everyone. Instead of shipping new replacement parts to Mars, I managed, along with a few colleagues, to send refurbished parts instead. This of course enabled us to capture the benefits of the price differential between refurbished and new parts." She watched the Sergeant's expression to judge his reaction.

The continuation of his non-committal look must have satisfied her, because she continued.

"To my mind, it was wasteful to send such valuable components to Mars, where, as you pointed out, there are so few robots that the parts were unlikely to be required. Since my insight generated the efficiency, it is only fair that I benefited from the cost savings created by the delta between sending new parts from Earth and refurbished parts from the Moon."

"That is only fair," the Sergeant agreed.

"Great idea, but my execution was somewhat suboptimal. I, through no fault of my own, mind you, failed to enable some other key personnel to benefit from this organizational design. As a result, I am in this 'lovely' place today."

The Sergeant had heard rumors about this scheme back on Earth. The idea was too good to prosecute her for but it was also too good to allow her to profit from it alone. Her superiors had solved the problem by sending her to Mars, appropriating the position of "Off world Robot supply manager" for themselves. The Sergeant had not been pleased to learn that his new Director was the one who had angered the senior leadership in the Government to such a degree that she was banished to Mars.

"It is never good to associate with the outcasts," he said to himself, striving to preserve his neutral expression during the pause.

# (7) Day 7 The Director recalls her motivation

During the pause, unbeknownst to the Sergeant, the Director had allowed her thoughts to wander to the series of misfortunes that had brought her to Mars. Still not fully accepting her situation, she remained angry with herself for her foolish mistakes. There were few ways to get rid of a government employee and she had somehow boxed herself into one. She blamed her lack of a family. In the early stages of her career the lack of a family had been an asset. She'd focused solely on the job, and done well. The lack had only created a vulnerability after she had achieved a degree of success in the government service to benefit from her position (as is customary).

Due to the lack of family, no friends she could trust, she had been forced to deposit the kickbacks and other profits of her decision making into accounts more easily linked to her than she had thought possible. When the scheme had been uncovered by the anti-corruption algorithms the few degrees of separation between her normal accounts and the Robot parts related accounts had made it impossible for her to claim the "gifts" sent from those accounts to her personal accounts were unrelated to her position.

Safe from dismissal, and lacking close colleagues in the service she had been at first sent to undesirable places like New York and Rio as a punishment. However, when the Mars requirement popped she was _voluntold_ to sign up for the list of potential 'winners'. Her lack of family hurt her again as anyone with even the most tenuous biological connection to another human exploited it to beg off the trip. For her, professional advantage turned into a massive liability. She had even considered marriage out of desperation, but since the thought of sharing anything repulsed her – an apartment, checking account, vehicle – it was too massive a sacrifice to make.

In hindsight, she recognized the massive stupidity of the decision – she would have gained far more than she lost by sharing. However, a late marriage would not have guaranteed getting out of the trip to Mars – she could, she thought with a shudder, have a husband on Earth buying things with the pay she was receiving while stationed on Mars for some indefinite (generally considered permanent because of the effects of gravity) period.

She shook her head and refocused on the Sergeant. If she had to be the Martian "representative" of the Robot repair scheme, she was going to maximize her personal advantage, even if that means branching out into new "endeavors".

# (8) Day 7 1241 The Director's New Plan

"I'm not going to make a similar mistake again," she emphatically blurted out.

Before going into hibernation on the trip out she'd racked her brains for an idea that would generate sufficient profits to enable her to return from what was in effect a death sentence. The intellectual effort had paid off. Her new idea had come when she was still in the hypnogogic state upon awakening from hibernation.

The "tools" in the diplo pouch on the desk in front of her enabled the initial steps of her new plan.

"If I can't leverage a government position into significant revenue, I don't deserve to call myself a bureaucrat and should suffer," she thought. "These Company delivered tools will enable a glorious return from exile, which I must admit is actually not all that bad since the goodies had started arriving in the Diplo pouches, to Earth, where I'll enjoy a life of retirement and wealth from the cash flow generated by the Mars project."

"The blood of these frontier folk will make us both rich," she said out loud.

"And get me back home," she thought silently.

The Director fished through the pouch, unloading medical vacuum tubes and old-fashioned needles onto a nearby table.

"I've sent you some links to some eBooks for study on the Dark Internet. It will take days to download the information, but you'll still get it. If anyone asks, you accessed them as part of your professional development research. You've gained a new collateral duty – blood lab tech."

A little confused, the Sergeant fell back onto his tried and true response. "Yes Ma'am."

"I'll figure it out later," he said to himself heading back to his office and the end of the movie. As he walked out he realized she hadn't given him a box from the pouch.

"The food is late!" he said to himself. "Another day on Mars, terrible as usual."

# (9) Day 7 1236 CentripGym

Dirk stormed down the streets toward Tom's house. The encounter with the bureaucrats had put Dirk in a foul mood, that increased, instead of decreased, with each step away from the lame City Hall. His dissatisfaction with his life rose up like a wave of sand from one of the all too frequent Martian storms.

"I've only been here a month, I hate wearing the compression/sweat recycling suit every time I go outside, I hate walking to the Crane Farm, and I hate being forced to do a job, a job just as easily done by a robot, as is proven by the fact that my only coworker is a robot! I could be back on Earth with my own apartment, own car, making boatloads of money competing in the Games!" Dirk thought to himself, in what was becoming his customary self-pitying rant/daily negative affirmation.

He knocked on Tom's door. Tom was the City engineer, responsible not only for the Power Plant, his main area of focus, but the water system and, it seemed to Dirk, everything else mechanical.

After a moment, Tom opened the door, his son Tom Junior, who Dirk had nicknamed T2, in his arms.

"Hi, Tom," Dirk said.

"Hi, Dirk, Hi, Radius" Tom said. "T2, say 'Hi,'" he said to his son, and moved T2's arm for him in a wave at both Dirk and Radius. Dirk waved back and smiled in spite of his terrible mood.

"We were heading over to the CentripGym," Tom said. "It is an improved version of the Omni Directional Fitness system on the ships. You guys want to come along?"

"Sure," Dirk said, happy for the distraction.

"No, thank you," said Radius. "I have maintenance to accomplish."

"Back in a while," yelled Tom to his wife and making sure T2's suit was adjusted properly closed the door behind him and started down the street.

"Don't you guys have your own centrifuge?" Dirk asked.

"Yes, but I like taking T2 to the big one at least every couple of days. He can crawl around on ours, but I want him to experience the bigger space so he doesn't get used to the small scale of ours and become uncomfortable with the larger ones."

It took less than five minutes to get to the CentripGym. It was on the east side of the city, close to the Power Plant. The single biggest power consumer, other than the water system and the greenhouses, it was divided from the rest of the City by a small hill made from soil excavated during the installation of the City water system.

"Why did they build this berm between the CentripGym and the rest of the City? Is it so people get a little warm up as they approach the gym to work out?" Dirk asked Tom.

Tom laughed. "No, but that is a good guess. Back on Earth, I remember seeing people riding the escalator from the free weights floor to the exercise machine section. On Mars, if something gets built, it is for one of three reasons. One, it is a absolutely essential for human life, or two constitutes a preparatory system for enabling human life."

"Yeah, like the Oxygen/Nitrogen producers or the Crane Farm," Dirk said.

"Correct," responded Tom. "Or three, it is a safety requirement. This berm serves the same function as your berms at the Crane Farm. The centrifuge can generate up to 15 earth Gs of force – if it catastrophically failed at that speed, (the cab separated from the drive shaft for example) it would blast like a missile right through the building and go shooting and bouncing along until it dissipated the accumulated potential energy. Being involved in that translation from rotational to linear movement is unpleasant for anything in the way: force = mass times acceleration (F=MA) and you don't want to be at the receiving end of that force. Hence the berm – it blocks movement toward the City – if the breakage sends the cab or counterweight out into the plain, that is much less a concern from a safety perspective," Tom concluded.

"– unless you are the guy in it when it breaks" said Dirk.

Tom laughed. "Right, good point."

Tom opened the door and they walked in. The lights came on automatically, and Dirk was underwhelmed. "It is a scaled up version of the home ones," he said to Tom.

"Yeah, but this one you don't have to pedal." Tom continued, "As you know, the home CentripGyms consisted of one or two (depending on the number of people living there) arms on which a recumbent bike seat and pedal assembly are mounted. The people are back-to-back and rotate around the center point. Depending on the speed at which they pedal (or alternatively it is possible to disengage the assembly linking the pedals to the drive shaft and allow an electric motor to do the work) the arms spin, applying centripetal force to the people on the arms. The spinning, like in a dryer, rapidly generates a large force the body experiences analogously as gravity. The first centrifuges were used for fighter pilot and astronaut training, and later adapted for use on space stations and long voyages to help retain muscle mass and skeletal functionality. But take a look at this – this, this, is what makes our CentripGym the best in the solar system."

He walked along the raised pathway, past a guardrail demarcating the CentripGym spin area to the wall opposite the door. Behind the CentripGym cab hung a set of shiny Olympic lifting bars and bumper plates.

"Whoa!" Dirk shouted. "This is fantastic!"

Tom smiled. "Yes, its great and practically no one else uses the stuff - no wait for equipment."

"It is even better than the Omni Directional set up on the ship I used on the trip to Mars," Dirk said.

The trip over had taken about 11 months. Hibernational technology had to compensate for the lack of propulsion system advances. Most people stayed in hibernation the entire time – after a week of the space cruise they were ready to stay asleep. Dirk's dad, however, hadn't wanted him to sleep that long.

"You're still growing, Dirk, and I don't think spending nine months racked out is going to be good for you." Dirk, uncharacteristically, failed to offer any opposition to his dad's proposal. The idea of losing all his muscle mass was extremely unappealing. Indeed, he almost didn't come to Mars because of it.

So on the trip over, instead of sleeping the entire time, he read and worked out on the hydraulic Omni-directional fitness system (ODF). The ODF consisted of a series of pistons arranged in a sphere with handles at the top of each piston. The pistons extended to provide a full range of motion. For example, securing his feet to two pistons and pulling himself up, enabled him to emulate pull-ups by working against not gravity but the suction provided by the pistons. Presses were easy, requiring pressing against the pistons, like pushing down on a bike pump when filling an almost full tire. With the system he was able to do most of his workout. Once he programmed it for the exercise he wanted to do the computer adjusted the pistons to the proper positions relative to his body (length of arms and legs, etc.) so he was able to glide into the center of the machine and get to work.

Sometimes, to emulate the Hero Workouts, he allowed the ODF to select programs for him at random – the 16 display screens would indicate the exercises and the appropriate handles illuminated to indicate where to the do the press or pull. It was actually really fun, and he'd only wished that there had been someone else there to work out with – competing against the computer was not as much fun.

Some moves, such as the muscle-up, remained difficult to emulate. Even with resistance bands, performing a muscle-up in the minimal induced gravity of the transport cruiser was infinitely easier than on Earth, and thus stimulated less strength development. Still, what working out he was able to do generated enough of a load on his body that although he knew he wasn't ready for competition he also hadn't entirely lost the physical skill and capabilities he'd worked so hard to develop.

"But how do you work out with it here? I mean, you can practically lift the entire set with one hand – the 45 lb. plates only provide 17 pounds of resistance." Dirk said.

"Right," agreed Tom. "And that is why we have this!" He flung open the door of the cab to reveal a complicated arrangement of bungee cords and a squat rack and bench bolted to the back wall.

Dirk stared for a moment, taking it in. "When rotating that back wall is the floor, right?" he asked Tom.

Tom smiled and nodded.

"And the bungee cords are used to secure the weights so they don't fly off independently."

"Yeah, and pound you to a pulp as they do so," Tom said.

"That is awesome," Dirk said. "Let's work out."

"Hold T2," Tom said. After handing the baby to Dirk, Tom grabbed an Olympic bar and climbed into the cab. "First you hook up the bar onto the straps depending on what you are going to do – squats, bench press, thrusters, cleans, whatever."

"Why the straps? Doesn't that make it too easy?"

Tom laughed. "Wait until you try it. On Earth you are only working against gravity, which is exerting a pulling force straight down. You move through the range of motion without having to adjust for the direction of the force, or deal with any additional forces, other than the ones you are generating. It is a complicated, but fairly simple process of sequential movement through several planes. In the CentripGym you are dealing with rotational force as well, even though once the assembly is up to speed the force is predominately perpendicular to the axis of movement, or in other words, directly 'down' toward the wall. The weights, due to mass variation, are affected differently by the movement. So when during a move in which the bar becomes "weightless" (as for example during that instant when you transition under the bar during a squat clean) in the centrifuge it is still under the influence of the rotational movement, and wants to move away from you opposite the direction of motion."

The importance of this dawned on Dirk. "So not only do you have to lift the weight, you have to control it simultaneously through the rotation."

"Yes!" said Tom. "Even at very low weights it is an incredible workout, because you have to control the weight in multiple dimensions simultaneously. The stabilization that your shoulders do during a bench press, for example, is exponentially more difficult here. But of course, difficulty is good, because struggle generates muscle growth."

Dirk was extremely excited – this was much better than the machine dependent resistance training he'd done on the trip out to Mars. Since fitness is in a large part the result of the _intensity_ of the physical challenge and response, not the _duration_ , short periods under multiple g's (3 or 4) could compensate for spending the remainder of the time weightless – and life on Mars wasn't weightless. Now with the large CentripGym he could get back into some real lifting and performing the WODs. "I'll win the first Martian Games!" he told T2.

"I'll participate in the Games too, buddy," Tom said in response.

Dirk thought quickly, "Oh of course, but we'll be in different age groups - I meant I'd win in my age group."

"Ah, that is what T2 and I thought you meant," he said with a smile. "Competition is good, and I'm glad you're here to provide me with a bit of a challenge. You chasing me down will keep me motivated to train. It's been difficult at times to convince myself to suit up and walk over here."

"So let's get to it," Dirk said happily.

# (10) Day 3 The Crane Farm

"Dirk, you've read the Book concerning your responsibilities, right?"

"Yes," Dirk responded sullenly. He'd enjoyed working out with Tom, but that couldn't make up for the rest of his Martian life. He'd arrived on Friday, and his dad had only allowed him the weekend before insisting that he immediately get to work! On the ship they had gradually adjusted the pressure and oxygen content so that when people arrived they were already 95% acclimatized, but he still felt weird, with a touch of altitude sickness – his head ached and he felt a little nauseated.

That Monday his dad could tell he wasn't happy. "Dirk, I know you don't want to start work immediately, but the Company needs you on the job. The delivery pace is increasing significantly in order to get all the necessary Elevator parts down to the anchor point so we are ready when the top assembly arrives in orbit."

The Book described his job as follows:

"Two landing zones constitute the Elevator staging and construction area (which Dirk referred to as the 'Crane Farm') – Zone 1 is a 100 meter dynamic net system into which low mass but high value packages land, bounce, releasing their kinetic energy, and eventually roll down into the center to the collection point." (Loc 270)

Dirk referred to it as the 'spiderweb', and it had proven less expensive than including a 100lb parachute in each delivery package. (The thinness of the Martian atmosphere, even after 100 years of terraforming, entailed extremely large, and thus heavy, parachutes (even when made of expensive Zylon) were required to slow reentry effectively. As a result, the parachutes were so big it cost more energy to get the parachute assemblies to Martian orbit than any possible payload they would deliver. Once the packages ceased bouncing, he'd walk underneath the net, and deflate the "bubble wrap" as he referred to the Vectran composed impact container/air bag assembly in which the packages were encased. Leaving the Vectran there as extra cushioning for the next delivery, he took the package to the holding area for delivery to the City when his shift concluded and he went home for the day. Except for the addition of the spider web (carbon nanofibers strung above 2 million year old meteor impact crater) the system was nearly identical to that used for delivery of the Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity by NASA in 2003.

"The only problem with it," Dirk said to his dad after the first few deliveries, "Is that more often than not the little packages blow off course, setting off the alarm and making me hike out to retrieve them."

The second area was more fun – there he guided the Sky Cranes through the final landing sequence. As the Book explained, "The Cranes are designed for heavy load delivery, and are descended from the 'Sky Cranes' that landed the Curiosity Rover on Mars in 2012. An expendable heat shield covers the lower half of the Crane, protecting it as it skids through the atmosphere. Released by explosive bolts, it spins up and over the Crane once it is within 100 km of the Crane Farm. At that point the retrorockets in the Crane begin to fire, slowing and finally bringing the Sky Crane above it to a stop above the main landing zone. In order to keep the unit cost of the Cranes down, (and to ensure that a failure to the guidance system caused by the bouncing through the atmosphere on entry is not fatal to the City) a simple homing system guides the Crane into the landing zone where the terminal phase is directed manually by the Crane Farm operator."

"The Book leaves out a lot of this description," his dad had explained to Dirk. "The Cranes can get themselves close to the landing pad, using the few GPS satellites in orbit. But once they get within 40 miles of the landing zone they require active guidance."

"But why not use Artificial Intelligence, like they have for all transportation modes on Earth?" Dirk asked.

"A simple artificial intelligence system coupled with a robust ground architecture (glide slope indicators, location broadcasting beacons in place, etc.) could provide the Cranes with sufficient organic intelligence to steer themselves down. However, creating systems capable of functioning reliably through the heat, bumps and dust storms was too expensive - especially for a single use delivery Crane. So instead of building the intelligence into each single use Crane, the decision was made to rely on an intelligent actor on the ground – and that is you," his dad explained.

"What about Robots?" Dirk asked. "They could use robots to provide the on ground guidance."

"The Company does employ robots, but remember, on Mars we lack the Robot infrastructure present on Luna and on Earth. We have spare parts here, of course, but not every possible part potentially required. In addition, Robots require power. This is not a big deal on Earth or Luna, where batteries are plentiful and the energy network ubiquitous. But here on Mars we are energy poor and at the very end of the industrial/technological supply lines. This is the frontier, and every decision incorporates the fully embedded cost of energy, especially the availability opportunity cost, into account. We live in a world of scarcity more similar to the Old West in the 19th century in the early days of the railroad than the 22st Century United States. Shift your thinking from a world in which energy is basically free back on Earth to one in which energy production, storage and distribution constitutes one of the biggest challenges we face."

"Then how are humans better than Robots in this situation? We have the food, housing and water infrastructure requirements that Robots don't."

His dad paused. "We'll talk about it later."

# (11) Day 3 Meeting Radius

As they climbed up the protective berm marking the beginning of the Crane Farm, Dirk again began complaining. "But why do I specifically have to do the work? Haven't robots done the work up until now?" Dirk said.

"We have a few robots, yes, but remember, we lack the power infrastructure here to easily keep them fully charged. It is not a problem on Earth, but the lack of power shapes everything we do here."

"Yeah, I've started to notice that," Dirk said sarcastically. He was not convinced of the utility of human workers performing the tasks he was now assigned.

His dad laughed, not allowing Dirk's crankiness to annoy him. "Anyway, I think you'll be pleased with your new coworker." They topped the berm and headed down to the Crane Farm. The Control Tower was to their right. To the left were the Garages, formed when they built up the berm by covering a 3D printed framework with soil. Dirk saw a robot walking from the closest Garage toward the Control Tower.

"Hi, Radius!" yelled his dad. "How's it going?"

"Good, Mr. K," Radius said. "Two Cranes are scheduled for this afternoon."

As they finally reached Radius, Mr. K shook hands with Radius. "Good to see you again. It has been a few days."

"Nice to see you as well," said Radius.

"Radius, I'd like you to meet the newest Company employee stationed here on Mars, my son Dirk."

Radius shook Dirk's hand. "Nice to meet you," he said.

"Hi," said Dirk.

Robot owners divided into two broad types – those who interacted with the robots as if with a multifunctional and self-propelling appliance and people who placed the Robot on a continuum between pet and friend. Dirk was in the former group. Back on Earth robots were everywhere, but they were mostly single function tools, lifters, sorters, telepresence platforms, etc. Humanoid multifunction robots, while available, were still fairly rare – the functionality they provided was seldom worth the extra cost (about the same as a luxury car). Some things robots could do better than humans, like lifting extremely heavy car components, or repetitive tasks like picking fruit and assembling communicators. "But," as he'd said to a friend while they were watching a Robot version of a Games competition (which Dirk had soon abandoned to work out on his own) "There is no challenge, and thus nothing to admire, in performing a task that one is perfectly designed to do. It is like being impressed by the digestive process. If a robot is designed to do X, and it does X effectively, so what?"

Therefore, Dirk wasn't impressed with Radius.

This was quite unfair – Radius was not a simple unitasker, but an extremely complex multifunction robot based on a model originally developed for disaster response. Non-humanoid robots, wheeled and multi legged, had important roles in disaster response, but it turned out that for combining the ability to transit chaotic terrain, like that caused by a building collapse in an earthquake or typhoon caused flooding, with the ability to carry heavy loads, no designs could match that of a bipedal human with two arms. As a result, rescue robots were humanoid not because it made humans more emotionally comfortable (humans were very comfortable with non-humanoid robots) but because such a form was optimized for the operational environments generated by disasters.

The two Cranes had landed, and Dirk had helped Radius unload the gear using the exoskeleton lift (first he watched Radius do it, and then performed the task himself with Radius providing guidance) and had pushed the Cranes into storage. With no more deliveries scheduled, it seemed reasonable to Dirk to call it a day. "There is no point in standing around," he said to himself as he started up the berm.

"Dirk, where are you going?" Radius called after him.

"Home," said Dirk, abruptly, not turning around, irritated his actions were questioned.

"But Dirk, we still have preventative maintenance to do. I can show you how to do the first set of radar checks."

Dirk stopped, groaned and turned back around. Two hours elapsed before he once again headed back home, this time with Radius accompanying him.

# (12) Day 5 Lifeguards

A few days later, even though no deliveries were scheduled, Radius walked into the garage and found Dirk surrounded by a growing pile of carbon fiber poles, tie downs, and Crane wiring insulation next to him.

"Dirk," Radius said, "You should not make unauthorized modifications to the Company gear."

Dirk was not in a mood to be bothered, still angry about a fall into a crevasse while recovering a stray package. On Earth the fall would have at best, broken a leg or two, but here on Mars had merely made him feel foolish.

Sick of listening to Radius' "pre-briefings" before each stay package recovery and needing time alone, he'd taken off without Radius. The package was only a mile away, the day clear and windless, and the impact plume stood out against the horizon. He'd hopped a couple of crevasses, ditches really, and was thinking about lunch when he came to what appeared simply another shallow ditch. Without thinking, he jumped across, not even breaking his stride. His right foot hit the other side – not just his toe, but his entire foot. It was a solid landing, and his momentum was carrying him forward as normal when the ground underneath his right foot collapsed. His left foot hit the side. In the low gravity he did a partial back flip. He pushed off in an attempt to regain control, but instead of helping him recover his balance, the push caused him to sprawl backwards into the crevasse. Tucking his head (his jujitsu training paid off), he landed on his shoulders. He'd paused for a second to catch his breath, his mouth filling with the dust from the crevasse collapse. His head up display (HUD) glasses had fallen off his face, through they were still attached to their lanyard around his neck. It took him a minute of wiggling to rest more comfortably on his back, with his legs up against the side. After putting his glasses back on, he instantly checked the signal strength indicator in the upper right corner – 1 bar. Seeing Radius on the map (which served as the screen saver) he heaved a sigh of relief.

He didn't call for help – seeing that it was available (if he had Radius on the display that meant he was within the WiMAX coverage and thus had comms) dispelled the first panic fingers. Working down the crevasse to the left a little way he wiggled his back against the wall closest to the Crane Farm. Pushing his feet against the opposite wall, he walked up until he could split his legs. With one foot on the front wall and one on the back, he jumped out onto his belly into the faint Martian sunshine.

After getting the package (another diplo) he headed back.

"I'm losing my rock climbing ability, heck, my ability to do much of anything athletic here on this stupid planet," he thought in a recurring loop on his way to the Crane Farm, the bruises on his ego intensifying as he rehashed the experience.

Therefore, when Radius hassled him later that same afternoon, Dirk rolled out from underneath the Crane and exploded. "But Radius, it's junk now! It is not worth the money to refuel the Cranes to get them back into orbit, so once they land they are useless." The rapid end of the service life of the Cranes, many of which had already been used for years for asteroid mining, enabled Dirk to justify his 'salvage operation' and he didn't appreciate Radius undermining his rationalizations.

"But Dirk," Radius said calmly, "Your modifications and reuse have not been properly authorized."

"How could they be authorized? No one knew doing this was necessary!" Dirk's own doubts about the appropriateness of his actions fueled his anger at Radius' questioning. "We are here because the Company couldn't anticipate every possible emergent requirement from Earth. We earn our pay when we think creatively, and recycling Crane parts in order to accelerate package delivery, and protect the Company's investment in package retrieval capability (us) is thinking creatively, right?"

These kinds of questions were difficult for Radius to answer. Dirk pressed his advantage.

"Anything we do to facilitate Elevator construction is good, yes? So by repurposing this junk we are ensuring the Elevator construction remains on schedule."

"Perhaps," said Radius. "But what are you doing?"

This caused Dirk to pause, and his anger to subside a bit.

"Um..." he said. "I'm building Lifeguards."

"What are Lifeguards?" Radius asked.

"They are tools to keep us from falling down the crevasses when we jump them. It occurred to me that on Earth we'd have safety harnesses attached to drones when we made these sorts of jumps, but here we of course don't. When out of WiMAX range if we fall into a deeper one, only someone following our precise path would ever find us. The surveying and terraforming assessment drones are not calibrated (and calibration before we froze to death is unlikely) such that they would discern a six foot human even if they were tasked to look for us specifically and we weren't hidden by the crevasse. So I thought of a tool enabling us to jump the crevasses and catch ourselves if we fail to stick the landing," Dirk explained. "I'm using the wire insulation as cordage to tie the carbon fiber poles originally used to secure some of the cargos together. If we carry one in each hand as we jump a crevasse, and then cross them, making an X, we can use it to catch ourselves when we miss." Dirk held up two finished Lifeguards and showed them to Radius.

"But how will they help if we are climbing into or out of one of the larger crevasses?" Radius asked.

"They won't," Dirk agreed, but there are only about 5 of the big ones requiring a climb, and 20 or so we can jump, so it is worthwhile to have them. I figure once I make enough of them we can leave sets along the paths at each crevasse so we don't have to carry them out and back."

Radius thought for a minute. "Ok," he said.

# (13) Day 8 Another day at the Crane Farm

The next morning Dirk paused for a moment at the top of the berm. He'd had to come down the Crane Farm earlier than usual. His irregular work hours, determined by the competing vectors of the Martian weather and the Company Elevator delivery schedule were both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because he didn't have to go to work at the same time everyday, and occasionally had days off in the middle of the week. On the other hand, any morning was fair game for a delivery.

"Well, there are many worse jobs," Dirk said to himself. "I'm lucky in that I'm able to actually make decisions with significance." When the radar indicated that a Crane was in range he took control and fired the jets on the Crane as necessary to bring it in for a landing. Although no one could see him (and if they did wouldn't care), he felt good about making a sweet landing, in which the Crane's load kissed the dirt at the very center of the landing zone bullseye. He considered a weekly on target landing percentage less than 95% a major failure. He'd gotten the hang of it with little effort – for him it was just another live video game.

Standing atop the berm he looked at the patterns he and Radius had made in the lichen. Around the landing zone the lichen grew thicker than in most areas – the erratic heating of the area by Cranes coming in for a landing facilitated growth. The lichen, extremely delicate, was crushed, though not killed, by every step. Although it bounced back after a few months, Dirk tried to avoid further damage by adhering to the paths that had emerged as a result of his work. The path design, optimized for the tasks he performed, gave him a sense of ownership.

As he and his dad had walked around after dinner the night before, he'd pointed out the patterns.

"Dad, you engineered the lichen and I completed the landscaping," he'd joked after noticing the complex path design he'd generated just by walking around.

The genetic engineering of the vegetation was quite a feat – one that he was learning to appreciate more and more as his education in genetic engineering progressed. His dad, who had designed much of the biological component of the terraforming process, had explained it to him soon after Dirk arrived, as they toured the outskirts of the City.

"Much of the initial thinking concerning genetically engineering plants to optimize them for the Martian environment," his dad explained, "focused on taking genetically well known, and thus highly developed plants, like corn, and modifying them as necessary for Mars. Optimizing the plants for the environment would necessarily, it was hoped, maximize growth and thus production. I had had a different, more indirect approach in mind. The goal was not to maximize production of any single plant type – instead, the goal was to produce an environment in which the large variety of plants (and ultimately animals, of which humans are a member of the set) could flourish. Thus optimization of any one plant type could retard, instead of advance, the ultimate goal."

"So what did you do," Dirk asked as they passed one of the oxygen generators.

"I proposed a slower in the beginning, faster in the long run, approach to the problem. I started with analysis of Martian fossil microbes, brought back by landers in the mid 2020s, but didn't really start to make useful progress until I found analogous Terran microbes in Antarctica, (especially those found on slopes of and in the caldera of Mount Erebus) and some geothermal vents in Yellowstone. These were sufficiently akin to the Martian fossils that I believed they could effectively produce soil based biomass."

Dirk hadn't been born when his dad did all this, and realized as his dad was talking that he didn't know anything about his dad's life before it became part of his own memories.

"I realized," his dad continued, "on a planetary level, (or more realistically in selected microclimates) we had to focus on 'growing' the soil. If we grew the proper soil, the entire rest of the food pyramid could flourish on that solid foundation. Absent appropriate soil, we'd be forced, like Earth bound farmers, to rely on petroleum based fertilizers. Of course, these fertilizers were a fantastic boon to humanity, enabling the Earth to feed itself, with food to spare, but on Mars such assistance is unavailable."

"Therefore, I was compelled to start from the 'bottom up'. Such a low start was less than popular," he continued, "both within the Company and with the public. The man on the street thought that such an indirect approach was a waste of time, a way to extort resources from shareholders. Gradually, however, my position gained allies, not least because I was able to demonstrate in the lab that my indirect approach generated more biomass in a shorter time than the corn and other easily modified plant based methodologies. In addition, my work on soil microbes proved to be the key to affecting atmospheric composition on a sufficiently large scale to generate change in the Martian atmosphere on a meaningful (decades, not centuries) timescale."

"What do you mean?" Dirk asked.

"The Martian atmosphere disappeared as a result of some mysterious cataclysmic process we still don't understand. Atmospheric terraforming, essential to sustain human life, was therefore the first priority. The original plan was based on bombarding the northern Martian hemisphere, the great Northern Plain, with C-type asteroids and comets, rich in water and atmospheric gases like nitrogen and oxygen. However, after about ten years the Company realized that it was proving inadequate to recreate an atmosphere suitable for humans."

"So what did you do?"

"Well, the microbes I examined for their utility for soil amendment put me on the path to large scale hacking of the Martian atmosphere."

"What, you mean you were hacking the planet's operating system?" asked Dirk.

His dad smiled. "That is a great way to put it! Yes, the atmospheric approach is in effect rewriting the operating system. In order to overcome the entropy that 'killed' Mars, we have added knowledge to the system. The knowledge acts like negative entropy."

"Which you did through genetic engineering – the information of the genes was added back into Mars," Dirk said, "to 'Make' the planet hospitable."

"Precisely!" said his dad. "On Earth, wetland microbes have an inordinately large impact on the atmosphere, producing methane, oxygen, nitrogen and other atmospheric gases and absorbing carbon dioxide. The salinity and amount of biomass are the primary determinates of the variation. I realized that we could use similar microbes on Mars to build the atmosphere using methane and water locked in the Martian permafrost. By seeding the Northern Hemisphere lowlands with the appropriate microbes and adding heat, I was able to create 'atmosphere engines'. The orbital mirror system, which you can actually see with the naked eye (it's up there)" he said pointing to the northeast "creates a band of warmth, a temperate zone above the equator in the Northern Hemisphere. This band of warmth enables the microbes seeded in the Northern Hemisphere to flourish. Six months after 'planting' they began pumping out atmospheric gasses at an increasing rate. The gasses they produced captured additional heat, creating a reinforcing cycle."

"But isn't the greenhouse effect bad?" Dirk asked. "I remember something about that in history."

"For a while people thought the CO2 gasses in the atmosphere would lead to catastrophic global warming. But it turns out the changes people thought were anthropogentic were actually normal for the planet. Variations in sun activity – when the sun is more active it pumps out more thermal energy, and conversely, when less active it pumps out less, making the Earth, and Mars, cooler - accounted for the temperature variation."

"But how did this particular band of microbes have such a significant effect on the atmosphere?" Dirk asked. "I thought the Martian atmosphere was almost completely gone 100 years ago."

"It was, but the atmospheric engine was able to produce the atmosphere we enjoy today because of the size of the microbe filled wetlands. On Earth, three percent of the planet is wetlands. The Company's terraforming activity made 20% of Mars a wetland, turbocharging atmosphere creation – and that is why you can walk around now."

"And have to wear these stupid suits."

"Yeah," his dad agreed. "I hate them too. But we'd dehydrate too quickly without them, and more importantly, the cosmic rays would cause cancer."

"But we can fix cancer," Dirk protested.

"Yes, on Earth, but poorly understood side effects of cancer treatments still occur, and the brain cancers are not yet fully defeated. Better to wear the suit."

# (14) Day 9 0835 Pre-Delivery Brief

The next day, as usual, Radius was at the Crane Farm early. After doing a few minor errands, Radius called Dirk over to the Control Tower. Another diplo pouch had gone astray.

Dirk, bored, listened sullenly to yet another of Radius' pre astray-delivery-retrieval briefings.

"...and that concludes the first step, understanding the microenvironment in which the retrieval will unfold," Radius said.

"Ugh," said Dirk rudely. "Radius, we can develop a better process for this other than talking through the steps each time as though we've never done this before."

"Pre-briefs are required for all evolutions," Radius responded, unperturbed by Dirk's outburst.

Dirk stood up. "Look. We have six critical factors we have to address every single time."

"Command and control, intelligence, maneuver, protection, sustainment," he wrote onto the wall mounted tablet that served as a whiteboard.

"First, the command and control is always the same – we document the landing site so the location appears on the log in the control tower and the we are off. Agreed?" Dirk asked, turning to Radius.

"Roger," said Radius. Dirk checked off 'C2'.

"Second, intelligence, or better situational awareness. We have to understand the area in which the package appeared to have landed. I see this in terms of two factors- distance and terrain. Distance from the Crane Farm determines time. Time determines the supply load required, and whether we leave immediately or have to wait until the next day. Most packages land in the low plain surrounding the zone or on the slope leading to the City and Mount Olympus. The Great Rift with its canyons is about 8 miles to the southeast, but so far no packages have gone there."

"Therefore," Radius interrupted, "We can simply put range rings on the map and refer to the distance that way. If it is in A through D, and between 270 and 30 degrees we know it will take less than three hours round trip."

"Exactly," said Dirk. "However, we have to keep in mind the second factor, the terrain. Those crevasses can really slow us down. We already have a pretty good idea of the crevasses and the way around them, but we have to take them into account."

"So if one of us reports a package landing site within those parameters, we both know the required immediate actions, in accordance with our standard operating procedures, and can execute quickly," Radius said.

"Right," Dirk concurred, placing a check mark by 'Intelligence'.

"Third, maneuver. This refers to the urgency and overlaps with the terrain aspect of the second factor. Those crevasses can ruin our day. They are easy enough to climb through, or even leap in the low Martian gravity, assuming we see them first and are not attempting to carry a heavy package as we negotiate the gap. To my mind, the difficulty of the crevasse transit is the key factor in our overall time evaluation."

"Remember," Radius said, "The locator beacons cease after five hours."

"Yeah," Dirk said. "As my Dad says, whenever I complain about something here, 'Every ounce, over the 140,000,000 miles between Earth and Mars, adds up.' It would have made our jobs easier if they had included larger batteries to keep those beacons on."

"But the point is to build the Elevator, not make our jobs easier," said Radius.

Dirk grudgingly agreed. "You're right. We are the least important part of the process – they only care about us when a package is delayed. Anyway, weight and size of the package also affects our maneuver capability. We have the weight and cube dimensions of each of the scheduled packages – those diplomatic pouches cause our biggest headaches. Taking a wheelbarrow with us will increase the time required and our sustainment requirements."

"Agreed," said Radius. Dirk checked off 'Maneuver'.

"Protection and sustainment are really the same thing for us here," Dirk said. "We bring our emergency body bags as protection from a sand storm and the chill of the night and enough food and water to keep us alive if we get stranded out there for some reason."

The "body bags" as Dirk referred to them, were modeled after the bags smoke jumpers used to carry when wildfires were still a problem. If a wind shift brought a wall of fire toward them as they were isolated on the side of a mountain, the smoke jumpers would zip themselves into the bags in order to survive the inferno. The bags, similar to sleeping bags, were made of fire resistant material, sufficiently thick to keep a person alive while a fast moving fire passed over the individual zipped inside, like a caterpillar in a cocoon. They were known jokingly as 'body bags' because they made recovery of the remains much easier if they didn't work in a specific case.

On Mars they were designed for sandstorm protection – not much danger of wildfires. Even Radius had one, since a sandstorm could scour him down to bare metal and destroy his electronics.

"Food for you," said Radius. "I'll simply power down."

Dirk laughed. "Good point. Another advantage you have over me."

"Actually," said Radius, "That is one of my major limitations. In an austere environment I am unable to recharge. I'm designed to receive power from the wireless induction system that is easy to find on Earth, but is only in a few locations, including the control tower and City homes, here on Mars. You are actually much easier to refuel than am I. That is why, I believe, you humans are carrying the bulk of the labor load here. The logistical requirements for building out the robot power infrastructure exceeds the value at this stage of Martian development."

Dirk had never thought about the situation in those terms before. He had wondered why he had the job, in other words, why the Martian workforce was not completely robotic. Radius' explanation made sense, but he still felt that it was not the entire answer.

"I hadn't thought of that before, Radius" Dirk said. "If that happens I'll either carry you home or come back with some fresh batteries for you."

"Thank you," said Radius.

"So, Radius, we now have a process for working through the brief. If it is within the A, B, C or D rings we simply grab the basic set of gear (water, food, etc.) and can head out immediately unless it is after 1600. If it is we'll have to take a little more time to analyze the situation to see if we can make it back before dark. Otherwise, we go. Agreed?"

"Agreed," said Radius. "That seems like an effective approach."

"In this case, we'll take the Circle Path 1, which circumnavigates the landing zone, and then strike out past that rock outcropping over there. What do you think?"

"Agree," said Radius, "But we'll have to do a lot of jumping over the crevasses on the way out. We may have to take the northern route back." The northern route was a path they had developed that reached almost to the initial slope of Mt Olympus. There was only one crevasse there and they had, one long afternoon, dug a path into and out of it so they could run the wheelbarrows through without stopping.

They headed out after grabbing their supply packs, with enough water, food and their key survival gear.

After 20 minutes they arrived at the first crevasse. Dirk grabbed two Lifeguards and jumped over.

It had taken some practice on a crevasse near the Crane Farm to perfect the 'catch' as they referred to it. Initially they had used only one, but found that they couldn't hold on with one hand to the Lifeguard as they fell. Holding one in each hand simplified the catch by providing a broader cushion and commensurate margin of error. Slightly crossing the Lifeguards, creating an unbalanced X, made it possible to either catch one's weight in a dip or land on the chest, saving the arms and shoulders from damaging impact. In the light gravity of Mars pressing up, getting the feet onto the guards and then bear crawling forward was easily accomplished. It didn't look cool, but 1) there was no one around to see and 2) it looked much cooler than freezing to death stuck upside down in a ditch.

"No falling today – nice," Dirk thought.

The package, after a 55 minute walk, was in sight. Its cushioning 'bubble wrap' still slowly deflating, caught the light of the setting sun.

# (15) Day 9 1130 Atmosphere

The trip back to the City was not bad – the road rose slightly up but the Crane was easy to push, even fully loaded, and unless a windstorm was blowing, he enjoyed the hike back. It made for a relaxing workout, similar to an active recovery day on Earth.

As he and Radius walked back, they passed the first of many oxygen generators, long metal tubes, extremely rusty, with solar powered fans on each end – one sucking air in and the other almost pure oxygen out.

His dad had explained the atmospheric transformation efforts. "NASA sent In-situ Resource Utilization units to Mars in the 2020s to scrub the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and make oxygen. Extracting consumables like oxygen from the Martian environment itself was an essential precursor to not only terraforming but to any sort of human activity on Mars," he'd said.

"Where did the technology come from? Was it designed specifically for Martian colonization?" Dirk asked.

"No," his dad said. "The initial units, based on carbon sequestration technology developed for coal fired power plants, were intended to create and store oxygen for fuel generation purposes. Large plastic bladders of nanotubes were attached to reactor tubes. The nanotubes trickled out of the bladder a few at a time, and when exposed in the large reactor tubes to the carbon dioxide rich atmosphere of Mars, 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen and 1.6% argon, the Sabatier reaction occurred, breaking the carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. As a result, the large metal tubes were covered with rust and the ground surrounding them black with graphite."

"If we have the reactors, why did you design and distribute the lichen?" Dirk asked.

"Although the carbon reactors, dropped all over the planet, did start the atmospheric changes, they failed to generate the necessary changes fast enough. Therefore, the Company asked me to develop a biological supplement. I was able to take advantage of the atmospheric changes the reactors had brought about, and so the microbes and lichens I designed had a head start."

"Are the reactors junk now then?" Dirk asked.

"No," his dad said. "The microbes have reduced the demand for the reactors, but after Elevator completion the Company intends to again ship reactant nanotubes to Mars. Reloading the reactor tubes will further accelerate atmosphere regeneration."

"With all the terraforming work, why is it still so hard to breathe here, or am I just having trouble acclimatizing?" Dirk asked.

"The atmospheric changes induced atmospheric pressure increases – however, not enough to ensure human health," his dad explained. "The human body is optimized for one atmosphere. The Martian atmospheric pressure is now 33% of Earth pressure at sea level - a major improvement from the around 5% of Earth's atmospheric pressure when the terraforming process began, but still not sufficiently Earth like to live comfortably. The combination of the low gravity and low atmospheric pressure doesn't result in explosive decompression, as exiting a spaceship would for example, but over a period of days leads to widespread bruising and joint pain."

"Like living at the top of Mount Everest," Dirk said.

"Exactly," his dad agreed.

"Although the long trip out from Earth was used to gradually acclimatize people to the atmospheric conditions," his dad continued, "People still have to wear protective suits when outside of pressurized buildings. The suits not only recycle sweat and thus reduce dehydration in the cold dry air, but also provide protection from cosmic rays that due to the thin atmosphere, and absence of a magnetic filed, constitute a serious health threat. Over time, the suits have become more like wetsuits (or more precisely, drysuits like those used for cold water diving) than spacesuits."

"Yeah," Dirk agreed, "But wearing a wetsuit surfing is infinitely more comfortable than this thing. I wish there were somewhere to swim on Mars."

"Yeah, so do I. That is probably what I miss the most. A long shower is not the same," his dad said. "The City was built at the base of the Mount Olympus range. Though there is no running water now, the City was placed next to a dried up lake that had a million years ago been fed by snowmelt and underground springs. As Mars cooled some of the water evaporated into space, but most of it sank into the ground creating the permafrost, and perhaps underground aquifers, like the Ogallalla underneath the Great Plains in the US. Melting that permafrost with 'moles' and 'flamingos', like heating the tundra on Earth, will bring that water back into a useful form."

"Moles and flamingos?" Dirk asked.

"That's my nickname for the system's robotic components. The Moles are robotic diggers. They drag hoses carrying antifreeze heated by waste heat from the Power Plant methane generators. The Moles dig into the ground and then spread, like the horizontal drills in natural gas systems. By using the waste heat to melt the permafrost ahead of them, they dig into the softened, marshy soil. Digging, waiting for the ground to soften, pulling the tube forward and waiting some more is a very slow process. We started 2 years ago, when the Power Plant was completed. Progress is measured in runs – the time it takes the moles to reach the end of the lakebed. Once at the end, the Moles return to the Power Plant on the surface, are attached to another run of u-tube, and sent back out, this time ten inches lower than the previous run. The second run has just begun."

"So that explains those huge spools," Dirk said. "I'd wondered about them."

"Yes," his dad explained. "The u-tubes slowly unroll from the spools. Indeed, the spools were one of the single largest deliveries on Mars, each requiring three Cranes to land. With Radius' help (he was indispensible to the process) we rolled them to the Plant where Tom and I jacked them up on to the racks. After plugging one end into the heat exchanger/antifreeze dispenser, we attached the other end to a Mole, who was 'set free' to dig."

"So what do the Flamingos do?" Dirk asked.

"I'm getting to that. After a few months, the lake area transformed from hard packed frozen dirt to a series of muddy puddles above the mole paths. Other robots, affectionately referred to as "Flamingos" walk through the marsh on pneumatic legs attached to hoses that lead back to the water treatment plant. Continuously searching the marsh for standing water, they lower their 'beaks' (the suction nozzle) into any puddles they find. The hoses are attached to a vacuum tank and a small pump in the flamingo's body provides extra propulsive force to move the water along the over two kilometer length tube. Neither process is quick – converting permafrost to marsh and harvesting the water for us to use, but since the robots work constantly, they are able to produce enough water to make up the losses due to metabolic action of plants and people, and thus keep the City alive."

"So why are we allowed to take regular showers?" Dirk asked. "With water scarce I thought we'd have to take Navy or California showers, turning the water off while soaping up."

His dad laughed. "Yes, that would make sense. However, from a biosphere cultivation perspective, humans are a valuable source of soil amendment. The gray water from the showers (everyone uses biodegradable soap) is sent to the hydroponic farm. The remaining sediments are pumped into a walled off section of the marsh that will serve as a future soil based farm. The sediments from the gray water, along with those from the waste treatment plant, are worked into the soil by robotic "earthworms". They follow the mole melt paths aerating the soil, facilitating melting, and mixing the human provided 'fertilizer' into the Martian soil."

"So Dad, have you found an microbes yet?" Dirk asked.

"I've detected conditions that are hospitable to Marian life, based on what we think we understand about its potential forms, but nothing has come to life as a result of the limited terraforming of the City 'garden'."

"Are you disappointed?" Dirk asked.

"Yes – it is not especially scientific of me to admit, but I'm very disappointed, and a little sad about it. I thought, with a high degree of (misplaced) certainty that the combined effect of increases in atmospheric pressure, humidity and soil moisture would suffice to get life going again. It seems I was wrong."

"Could it be the result of the cosmic rays?"

"Good thinking, Dirk. I'm afraid you may be right. The loss of cosmic ray protection might have led to the zapping of all life on the surface, and it won't snap back. I keep looking for wee beasties, like Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, but my enthusiasm decreases every day."

# (16) Day 10 Vampirism on Mars

"Sergeant, clean off a shelf in the kitchen – we're going to use it as a storage area. The ship comes in a month, and first load must be ready to go."

The question, which had been nagging at the back of the Sergeant's mind ever since the Director first explained the Project, jumped unbidden from his lips: "Why does Martian blood have a value on Earth that justifies the cost of getting it there?"

Her condescending look made him regret asking.

The Director, however, was not entirely displeased at an opportunity to explain. She'd fleshed out the idea over the past few months, and given the nature of the Project, had been unable to share it widely. As a result, she'd felt keenly the absence of the admiration from others she felt the idea deserved. The plan, to her mind, was brilliant in its simplicity. She and her Partners on Earth (this sharing wounded her, but was necessary – she'd learned her lesson about creating incentives for others in the Government to protect her, and she couldn't do everything from Mars) will sell blood from the Martians to high net worth individuals on Earth. Impressing the Sergeant with the plan's beautiful logic, while less than completely satisfying, was certainly better than impressing no one.

"Excellent question," she said. Her initial look of bored contempt transformed into her best fake smile, making the Sergeant feel as though she was happy, overjoyed actually, that he'd asked the question. She had not risen as far as she had without a sufficient command of apparent pleasantness. The smile (which he'd never seen before) dazzled the Sergeant.

"As you know," she began, "Genetic and other nanobiomechanical engineering has solved most health problems. However, people still seek an edge, a way to get ahead of others. What this Project enables is the transformation of a commodity service, health care, into a fashion accessory. Moreover, fashion creates it own market. We are providing pure blood, free of Earth toxins, oxygenated by red blood cells adapted to an environment similar to that of the Himalayas on Earth, but without the Chinese generated smog."

The Sergeant, initially impressed, voiced a doubt. "But is the blood actually better than the stuff you get in the hospital?"

"Do people pay for organic produce?" the Director asked rhetorically. "The actual efficacy of the blood we supply in terms of increasing health is immaterial. My Partners back on Earth have confirmed there is indeed a lucrative market – some people have more money than sense, and our product will help redress that imbalance. With the supplies we have here –specially made because few actual blood transfusions occurred anymore –we can now begin harvesting in time for delivery back to Earth on the next transport ship."

"But how will we compel people to donate blood?" asked the Sergeant. "There is no reason to."

The Director looked at him like an exasperated parent looks at a four year old who asked the same question three times in a row. "We are the Government – the Government controls medicine. Any excuse will do - cosmic ray exposure testing, Martian atmosphere contamination checks, whatever. On this first shipment we only require enough to provide samples to stimulate demand, so a small quantity of blood will suffice."

"Who will provide the samples?" the Sergeant asked.

"Good question. In addition to purity, we are also selling youth," she said.

"The delivery boy," the Sergeant guessed.

"Yes – the delivery boy. He is our best option, you know, because the average age on Mars is actually higher than that back on Earth. In these early days of colonization only people on the older end of the spectrum are willing to leave Earth behind, never to return."

"You're not on the 'older end of the spectrum,'" the Sergeant said.

The Director gave an indulgent smile – "And I'm not here voluntarily. You're not that old either – we still have a chance at a life, an actual life!" Her emotions began to show in her voice. She caught herself, paused, and stood staring at her desk.

The Sergeant, sensing the conversation was over, left.

# (17) Day 10 Rock Climbing

"Hey Radius, let's see if Tom wants to do some climbing." Dirk said.

"Ok," Radius agreed. He enjoyed the climbing not because it presented him with a physical challenge but because he enjoyed predicting fall, near falls and landings. Two subjects made the calculations more difficult and thus more fun. As he spent more time on Mars his predictive algorithms were improving. The continuous improvement of Dirk and Tom's skills added additional complexity and thus kept it interesting.

Dirk knocked on Tom's door. Texting, though possible, was out of favor among the Martians except for work, another result of the lack of privacy. People didn't desire constant connection through communication devices – they were connected enough already by physical proximity. Circumnavigation of the entire City took only 30 minutes.

Dirk waited patiently for over a minute – Tom always took an inordinately long time to answer the door. He was either talking to his wife, reading, or more likely, playing with his baby son, T2.

So actually, Dirk was the second youngest human on Mars, Tom's wife Mandy the third and Tom the fourth.

"Climbing?" Dirk asked Tom when he finally opened the door.

"Sure!" said Tom. "Let me grab T2." "Mandy," he yelled into the house, "I'm going out with Dirk and Radius and am taking T2."

"No climbing with T2," Mandy yelled back.

"Ok," said Tom, smiling at T2 and shaking his head "Yes." Tom put T2 in his carrier (a hammock like piece of fabric) facing forward so he could see the world as they walked. When tired, T2 could lay down and take a nap.

They headed northeast to the Power Plant where Dirk had first met Tom, the City Chief Engineer. Dirk had noticed him outside the Plant on a Saturday afternoon. He'd been called to the Plant by a high temperature indicator on one of the turbine generators. Unfortunately, the cipher lock on the main door, always kind of balky due to the regular practice of sending obsolete versions of most types of gear to Mars instead of buying the latest and greatest, seemed to have failed. Sending old security equipment made sense in a way, since no one wanted to test new equipment on Mars when the replacement costs were so high, and the security threat was very low. However, from an actual daily user perspective, it seemed, to Dirk anyway, dumber than dirt because reliability was at such a premium 140,000,000 away from Earth.

Dirk had happened by as Tom, his frustration growing with every turn of the dial, was attempting the combination for the tenth time. Dirk and Tom had met before, but not really talked. Dirk waited with Tom as he struggled with the lock, becoming increasingly frustrated. He needed access to the Plant in order to check out the high temp alarm on gas generator number four – a high turbine temp could turn into a fire. Remaining outside and hoping for the best was not an option. After about 15 minutes Dirk spoke up.

"Hey Tom, is there another way in, a window or something?"

Tom thought about it for a moment. "You know, there might be. There is a hatch on the roof. I'm too big to fit, but Dirk you could probably squeeze through." They went around to the back of the Power Plant.

"Ok Dirk, I'll boost you up to that ledge. From there, you'll have to jump and get over onto the roof," Tom explained.

Dirk analyzed the distance. "I can make it," he said. "I'll do a muscle up after grabbing the lip of the roof."

"Sounds good," said Tom. "And in this low gravity it won't hurt too much if you miss," he said with a laugh.

Dirk easily made the leap and pulled himself up and onto the roof.

"The hatch is almost in the middle of the roof, over to your right. When you open it you'll see a ladder on the side of the support column," yelled Tom.

"Ok," said Dirk. "No problem."

Dirk climbed down the ladder and after a couple of wrong turns in the confusing mass of enclosures, tanks, and piping, found and opened the door.

"Thanks, Man!" said Tom. "I'm removing this lock and replacing it with an analog hasp and padlock – and I'm going to give you the extra key so I can't lock myself out."

"Happy to help," said Dirk.

Following Dirk's practical application of climbing skill, the two had often met to do parkour through the town and climb in the ravines around it.

They arrived at the ravine closest to the City.

"Here, hold T2," Tom said.

Dirk took T2, put the baby carrier over his shoulder and sat T2 in it so he could watch his dad.

T2, smiling happily, wiggled up and down, using the carrier like a bungee bouncer.

Tom dusted his hands and climbed down into the ravine. After shaking his arms back and forth and stretching his forearms, he climbed up to the point, distinguishable by the stark change in soil color on the surface, at which they had decided the course started.

T2 settled himself, and as Tom began his bouldering T2 raised his little arms.

"Ooo ooo," he said, opening and closing his hands and moving his head up and down in emulation.

"You have not evolved so far from the monkeys after all," said Radius.

Tom laughed and kept climbing.

Dirk looked at Radius with surprise. Had Radius just made a joke? Humor was not included in his model – the type of Artificial Intelligence necessary for actual humor was not installed in off planet models. Maybe he'd received a free software upgrade with humor subroutines?

His thoughts were interrupted by Tom sliding to the bottom of the ravine after missing a hold.

"Your turn, Dirk," he said. 'The nubbies are slippery today."

# (18) Day 11 Dirk's Hacker Credentials and another package goes astray

"Radius, another 'screamer' (Dirk's nickname for off track packages, because of the annoying alarm they stimulated) inbound," Dirk called out over the net, in spite of knowing it was unnecessary. Radius received the messages over the network as long as he was in range, but Dirk was in the habit of using voice with Radius. While on Earth people would text across the table while eating lunch, on Mars Company training encouraged them to use voice. The communication, unmediated by a screen, supposedly decreased nascent feelings of loneliness. This one had activated the "off course," but not the "impact" alarm. It was so far off course there was only a negligible chance (due to a high altitude windstorm perhaps) its trip would conclude with a violent impact on the Crane Farm.

He picked up his hiking backpack from the corner of the control room. His dad insisted on it and Dirk didn't argue or resent it – most of the time – as he would have on Earth. It was heavy, even on Mars, but "Be Prepared" was no less a valid motto to live by on Mars than on Earth. Indeed, at this stage of development such an approach to daily life was even more necessary because the automatic dispatch of medical rescue (based on automated monitoring of the individual's physical datastream) people habitually counted on was no longer available.

The landing area was located on a plateau a slight rise at the foot of Mt Olympus. It, along with the City, had been placed there because the mountain generated a lee that created some shelter from the full force of the occasional massive dust storms. In addition, the plateau simplified the landing and tracking process – it stood out clearly against the background. Indicating an excess of optimism, or as his dad would say, "Confidence in the terraforming process," the planners placed the City so that flash floods coming off Olympus would not negatively impact the Crane Farm or City the way they would if the primary inhabited area had been placed on the wider plain below.

"Beepe beepek" The express package squawked, revealing its location on the monitor.

"Sometimes I wish Dad had not thought of these heavy clothes," Dirk said as he and Radius strode out toward the area of uncertainty in which the package (supposedly) rested. The Crane Farm radar system calculated a projected area of uncertainty for the stray packages. In other words, it drew at ellipse within which, at a 90% probability, the package rested. However, due to what Dirk referred to as the "Swerve" resulting from variations in wind speed and direction in the layers of Mars' thin atmosphere as the package plummeted toward the surface, the predictions were sometimes way, way off. They had yet to fail in a recovery, but only due to Dirk's justified confidence in his sense of direction and ability to find things honed through Scouting back on Earth.

He'd been pleased when his dad sent him a message to come over and get his new clothes – the sweat suit he'd had to put on before leaving the transport ship was uncomfortable, and he still hadn't become used to wearing it. Accustomed to running, swimming and jumping in minimalist shoes and shorts, the suit, like a full body compression sock with plumbing to recycle his sweat, was an unpleasant tactile reminder of the harshness of Martian life.

His pleased excitement had rapidly turned to disappointment when he'd picked up the clothing. "What are these, snow pants?" he'd snapped, not trying to hide his displeasure. "What are they made of, old tarps?"

His dad laughed, annoying him further. "Yes, actually, they are repurposed cargo covers. I needed some way to add weight to your body, and the cargo covers, designed to shield delicate electronics from cosmic rays during transit fit the bill."

Dirk was so angry he couldn't even speak. He'd been looking forward to a newer, lighter (and thus more comfortable) compression sweat suit, and his dad had given him trousers and a vest with heavy patches sewn down the outside of the trouser legs and along the back and shoulders. A large patch covered his stomach.

"I'm not wearing this," he said.

"I disagree," said his dad. "This isn't like your retainer when you were 13."

"Why do you want me to wear these?" Dirk asked, furious.

"Gravity," said his dad.

When Dirk didn't respond, he continued. "Martian gravity is only 38% of Earth gravity. Our bodies are accustomed to a much stronger gravitational pull - therefore living on Mars is easier on our bodies, in terms of load placed on our muscles, than even laying in bed on Earth. So what is living here going to do to your muscles?"

"They'll atrophy, but I'll prevent that with the CentripGym," Dirk responded.

"Yes, the CentripGym is necessary, but not sufficient. Even if you use it an hour a day, that still means 90% of your time your body is unloaded. I'm not sure that is good for you, especially since you are still growing."

"If Mars is so bad for me why did you force me to come here?"

"Leaving aside the 'forcing' I'll tell you later why are you are here, but I'm certainly glad you are. The important issue is that you must wear the special clothes I've made for you, in order to avoid losing entirely the physical capabilities you've worked so hard to develop."

Dirk thought for a moment. Even though he'd worked out regularly on the ship on the way over, while most people slept, he'd still noticed a substantial loss of muscle mass. Actually, the problem had been nagging at the back of his mind, and now as he'd had time to process the clothing idea, he agreed it was a good, perhaps even great, solution - but he wasn't about to admit that to his dad.

"Ok, I'll wear them," he said grudgingly. No one would see them under the Bedouin type overcoat he wore. The first City inhabitants had started the fashion. Too much sand infiltrated regular clothes worn over the pressure sweat suit (to protect it from abrasion) for comfort. They had therefore started wearing full length tunics, like Bedouin tribesmen in the 20th century, to keep the sand out.

"Nice!" said his dad, slapping him on the back. "Look at this." His dad pulled another set off the floor. "I made myself some too!"

"Great," said Dirk unenthusiastically.

He could feel the difference wearing the heavy clothes as he walked. "I guess they are working," he thought.

"Package sighted," said Radius.

"That was quick," said Dirk. "I wish all the retrievals were this easy. It seems like the spider web that is supposed to catch these little guys repels them instead."

# (19) Day 12 Fire!

"Tom," Dirk yelled into the Power Plant. "My Dad says I can build my own house! And that you are the guy to talk to!"

Tom didn't hear Dirk – he was inside the #3 methane GTG (Gas Turbine Generator) enclosure that thermally and acoustically isolated the engine from the rest of the Power Plant. The thermal isolation didn't matter now – a heat exchanger captured much of the waste heat from the engine and used it for greenhouse thermal management, but the acoustic isolation ensured he was utterly oblivious to Dirk's message.

Dirk wandered around the Power Plant. Tom's wife, Mandy, had said he was here somewhere. Dirk grabbed the "Mickey Mouse" earmuff like hearing protection and put them on as he passed into the noisy side of the plant. The City was powered for the most part by gas turbine engines, the kind they used to use on airplanes. Although considered obsolete on Earth, due to its robustness it was a favorite for off planet applications. The printed assemblies had lifetimes measured in 100s of years at a minimum and could run for hundreds of thousands of hours on a wide variety of fuels. On Mars they burned predominately methane, but the methane was only filtered, not refined, so the robustness of the gas turbines was essential.

They did however require some limited Preventative Maintenance, and Tom was engaged in semi-annual Preventative Maintenance System (PMS) checks when Dirk finally found him, Tom's feet sticking out of the enclosure as he lay on his back reinstalling a filter.

"Hey Tom!" Dirk said as he poked his head into the enclosure.

"Hi, Dirk," Tom yelled. "Hand me that rag if you would please. I cleaned this in the ultrasonic washer, and it is still a little wet."

Dirk looked around and handed Tom the first rag he saw. Tom wiped the reinstalled filter and wiggled out from under the combustor housing.

"Thanks," he said. "Let's get back to the quiet zone before we talk. I have double hearing protection in and can't understand anything you are saying."

Dirk nodded and followed Tom as he walked to the control area.

Dirk sat down and waited as Tom entered the maintenance completion into the log. He then walked over to the main control panel and removed a red tag tied to the main switch for the #3 GTG.

"What is that tag for?" Dirk asked.

"To prevent getting killed," Tom answered.

"Huh?" responded Dirk.

"It is not such a big deal here, especially since I'm the only tech. However, the system developed by the nuclear powered navy back in the 1960's proved its value in blood conservation. The systems on the subs and ships were so complex that someone could have taken a piece of gear apart, like a valve on a steam line, in order to do maintenance. Someone else, not knowing the system was in pieces, would route the steam to that line, perhaps to do maintenance on some other system, sending steam onto the guy doing the work."

"That would ruin your day," said Dirk.

"Yeah," agreed Tom. "No one wants that to happen on any industrial system, but on nuclear systems that is especially suboptimal. In order to avoid such accidents, they created the Planned Maintenance System (PMS) system, which requires a physical tag on the switches that affect the system whenever that system is not fully operational, as when for example it has been taken apart for maintenance."

"But you are the only one here? Why waste the time? If you don't change the position of a switch, no one will."

"Two reasons," said Tom. 'First, it is an effective practice to maintain as a professional engineer. Second, I might do maintenance on a part, forget about it, and misalign the system causing damage. On Mars we cannot afford those sorts of dumb mistakes."

Dirk thought for a moment. The concept of "Safety" had all but disappeared back on Earth, and it was taking him some time to adjust to Tom and his dad's safety obsession.

Prior to his Mars arrival, Dirk had thought about safety only in terms of injury avoidance during training - not because an injury was catastrophic, but because it would take time, time he could ill afford as he was making the jump from amateur to professional athlete in the Games. Acquiring another arm, leg or even eye, was fairly easy. However, full integration of the new part, and using it effectively in competition still took training and time. In addition, the rules concerning augmentation in the Games were very strict – for the average man on the street a bionically enhanced arm had no downside, but for an athlete the increase in physical capability could mean the end of an athletic career. There were leagues consisting of augmented players, but they had come to occupy the niche previously covered by professional wrestling – fun to watch, but not taken seriously as sport.

Here on Mars, however, he couldn't get away from thinking about it and making "safety" a way of life. For as his dad said, "If you don't make time for safety there will not be time for anything."

"Dirk," Tom said, wiping his hands an another rag and putting the tool box on the floor against the wall within a box drawn on the deck that matched the dimensions of the box and was labeled 'GTG PMS,' "What can I do you for?"

"My Dad says I can make my own house!" Dirk exclaimed. "He said you have the printer and building ink and to come see you to get the Book with the designs and mod program."

"Great," said Tom. "I was wondering what your Dad was planning to do with the extra ink. I guess it wasn't 'extra' after all. The Printer Book is in my other office. Come on."

Tom led the way through the maze of headers, engine enclosures, and lube and fuel tanks up the huge ramp into the first City bound cargo ship. The 500 meter ship dominated the City, like a Cathedral in a medieval market town.

It had served as the initial home of the colonists as the City was built two years prior to Dirk's arrival. The Power Plant had been built adjacent to the ship.

"This is awesome!" Dirk said as they walked into the belly of the ship via the cargo ramp, stepping over and ducking under the huge spaghetti like mess of cables snaking from the ship to the Power Plant. All the initial life support systems had issued from the ship – water, sewage, oxygen and nitrogen storage for emergencies, and of course electrical power – in the Colony's early days. The Power Plant now performed most of the command and control functions, while the ship served as an emergency backup.

Once off the cargo deck they climbed up two levels and continued down the central passageway, occasionally stepping through airtight hatches.

"Hey Tom, these look like the same kind of hatches you see on ships in old movies," Dirk observed.

"That's right," Tom responded. "Whereas on Earth the objective is to preserve water tight integrity to ensure the buoyancy necessary to keep the ship afloat in the event of a collision, engineering casualty or hostile action, the vacuum of space generates atmospheric integrity preservation requirements."

"But I don't remember similar doors on the ship I took to Mars," Dirk said.

"They spend more money on the passenger freighters. Those ships have integrated meteor defenses that zap debris with lasers before it impacts the ship. They also have thicker hulls and, even though you didn't notice them, emergency pneumatics that isolate the ships into air tight zones. Next time a ship comes we'll go on it and I'll point them out to you. Like airbags in a car they automatically inflate when required. The problem with them however is that once they are activated you cannot move around the ship easily. In order to patch the hull penetration, the crew must depressurize and then dis-inflate the pneumatic barriers. However, since the barriers are the third line of defense the designers figured that constituted a manageable cost.

"So why don't you have that here?"

"Two reasons," Tom said. "First, cost. Second, this was originally an asteroid mining services ship - so the chances of hull penetration were much greater. We had to take vacuum management very seriously. Movement around the ship to make repairs, even in a vacuum, was essential for our small crew. Therefore, the pneumatics didn't work for us."

"Does anybody live in here still?" asked Dirk.

"No," Tom said. "It is nice enough, but the staterooms are very small and keeping the entire ship ventilated, heated and the water and sewage systems operating is too energy intensive."

"But I hear ventilation," Dirk said.

"Yes, I keep the basic system going, but it barely keeps the ship alive. The main control spaces are maintained at a habitable level, but if we went through any of these hatches we are passing you'd notice an immediate difference in the air quality."

They took a series of ladders up and walked forward again for what seemed to Dirk an inordinately long time. Finally, Tom opened a hatch and Dirk saw the entire City with his own eyes for the first time. He'd seen pictures before leaving Earth, but he now looked out over the houses and buildings from four stories up – an insignificant height on Earth, but a staggeringly high perspective on Mars. He'd been on Mars for a month and had become accustomed to operating entirely at ground level – this was a welcome change.

The ship faced North, and from the port side of the bridge Dirk saw the City spread out to the West, with Mons Olympus occupying the Western horizon. He walked along the bridge from left to right, taking in the sights. Off the starboard side he was able to look down onto the greenhouses, the water ponds and the power field where they "mined" the methane crystals that provided 90% of their power.

"What are all of these controls?" Dirk asked, pointing at a chair with a yoke and foot pedals. "Don't you control the ship from the tablet and let the automatic systems do the navigation and flying?"

"It is certainly possible to allow the ship to fly itself, but this ship is designed for manual operation," Tom said.

"Why?" asked Dirk. "Isn't that a waste of human time when computers could do it faster and better?"

"In some ways, that is true, but the operational requirements for this type of ship are such that keeping the human in the loop was deemed essential for two reasons. First, when this ship was built the malicious hacker threat had reemerged. In the constant battle between offense and defense, the offense had gained the advantage and hackers were both infecting ships with malware and taking control of ships. In the best cases committed piracy – the age old hijacking of ships for their cargo, to use the ship for other illegal activity, or to sell it. However, there were also cases of ships being hijacked and destroyed by environmental activists. Even on ships designed with emergency manual controls the hackers were often able to lock out the manual control capabilities, or retain computer control of the key functions, such as engine thrust for example, at a deeper level of the system, negating the manual control cut outs. In addition, the predominantly computer control makes pilots lazy and less capable of responding effectively to emergencies. A computer can do everything better than a human, except when it can't," Tom concluded. "As a result of these threats, this ship is designed for predominantly manual control."

As Dirk began his second circumnavigation of the row of bridge windows an alarm sounded. Dirk jumped back, afraid he'd set it off somehow.

Tom's eye went to the indicator panel on the aft bulkhead.

"Come on," he said calmly but firmly. "You can help me deal with this dust bunny attack."

Tom quickly left the bridge. As Dirk followed closely behind him, he heard hatches slamming shut throughout the ship.

"What's that banging?" he asked Tom, a little bit nervous.

"Don't sweat that – it is the fire zone doors shutting. When there is a fire alarm the ventilation system shuts down to avoid spreading smoke. The fire zone doors, which are held in the open position by electromagnets, close to further isolate the fire."

Dirk almost had to run to keep up with Tom. Tom swung up ladders, down passageways, through closed fire zone doors until they reached the staterooms near the upper part of the ship. The flashing of the alarm lights was brighter here, indicating proximity to the fire.

Tom opened a locker, one of many they had passed on their movement through the ship, and removed a oxygen breathing apparatus (OBA) complete with face mask and a fire fighting ensemble, and handed them to Dirk.

"Put this on" Tom said, as he stepped quickly into the ensemble and pulled his own OBA on. He was done before Dirk had even started.

"Put on the mask, but don't activate it unless I tell you to or I don't come back out of that door in 3 minutes," Tom said. Tom pulled the door open and was in the space before Dirk could respond. He tightened the mask onto his face – he'd practiced with this sort of gear one year at summer camp, but hadn't touched (or actually thought about it) since.

Dirk suddenly remembered to check his watch and started the stopwatch. He stared at it as he listened for Tom.

The door opened at 2:30 seconds and Tom walked out. "As I suspected," he said, the mask still on, "dust bunnies in a ventilation fan. In spite of all the filters, dust and sand gets into the ventilation uptakes and from there into the fans. After a while, it scours away the insulation on the wires and we get a class Charlie fire."

Dirk recalled the four types of fires: Alphas - wood and other stuff, like paper, that leaves ash; Bravo - petroleum products, fuels, lube oils, etc.; Charlie - electrical and Delta, or special like Magnesium and self oxidizing fuels.

"So you used CO2, right?" Dirk asked.

"Yes, we have a fixed flooding system. We can make CO2, but we can't make halon. You know a lot about fire fighting Dirk. So why did I put the mask on before I opened the door? Why not rush in?"

Dirk thought a moment. "You said it was a fixed flooding system?"

"Yep," said Tom.

"CO2 displaces oxygen – that is how it puts out the fire. If you had gone into a confined space, like a fan room with the fans secured, without supplemental breathing equipment, you would have passed out from lack of oxygen."

"And died," Tom agreed. "Very good. I'm glad I had you along. I've isolated the fan – another ventilation degradation for the old girl."

Tom removed the ensemble. "Did you activate your OBA?"

"No," Dirk said.

"Good, I don't want to waste it. If I hadn't come out in the three minutes you would have activated the OBA and come in to get me, right?" he asked.

"Of course," Dirk said. "Somebody has to carry T2 around."

"Thanks. Let's put these ensembles away and head back to the bridge."

Tom sat down in the Captain's chair and began typing on the flat panel that he swung in front of his chair. The giant tablet, mounted on a robotic arm that adjusted the position of the screen based on Tom's position, continually ensuring it was optimized for typing or reading.

"Hey, are you allowed to sit in the Captain's chair?" Dirk asked.

Tom smiled. "I'm pretty sure its ok – I'm the Captain."

Dirk felt really stupid, and stared out at the greenhouse as his face flushed with embarrassment. "Ok, of course" he said.

"You'll find that everyone here has a broad skill set. One reason I took this position was to enable me to stay at home with Mandy and T2. I spent 6 years qualifying and then piloting ships to and from asteroid mining projects."

"I thought those ships were autonomous," Dirk said.

"Yes, most of them are, but there are still a few jobs that require human intervention. I piloted those specialized ships and was on the team performing those complex engineering tasks. As a result, I was gone most of the time, it seemed. Mandy and I didn't even live together until after we'd been married for a year and even after that I was gone, it seemed, all the time. So I had to move to Mars to spend every day with my family."

"Why didn't they use the ship to power the city? Dirk asked. "It's big enough isn't it?"

"In some ways it is big enough, but its auxiliary power systems were designed to run the ship, not power a town. They could have installed additional auxiliary power capability, but that would add to the cost. In addition, they wanted the City to become self sustaining, which requires more power than the ship can provide. It was thus cheaper to transport gas turbine generators and only rely on the ship until the methane fuel production system became operational," Tom answered.

"And I guess relying entirely on the ship for power and services could prove seriously suboptimal in the event of a fire bigger than the one we saw," Dirk said.

"Excellent point," Tom said, with an admiring smile. "Relying on any single system, even an inter-solar service craft, for our 'household' services - in other words, the basic life support systems - is not smart. In fact, that is why your job is so important."

Dirk looked quickly at Tom. "Huh?" he said. "How is my job important?"

"We are currently operating at a level of high risk – the boundary between life and death for the entire colony is razor thin. We have to wait for the Elevator to deliver the necessary equipment to establish our backup infrastructure, like a secondary control system for the water and power. I've been working on jury rigging an emergency pumping system in order to maintain enough pressure in the water system to ensure sufficient flow to avoid it freezing – and thus keep us alive – but I'm not sure it would work and don't want to take the chance. For that and many other reasons, the faster you get the Elevator equipment delivered the better for all of us."

Dirk had a new found respect for his job – not enough to make him look forward to doing it, but Tom had provided another perspective from which to look at his day of tedium interspersed with a delivery challenge every few days, and the always annoying diplomatic pouches.

Dirk turned away from the window to look more closely around the bridge. "This is an awesome workspace," Dirk said, changing the subject. "You can see for miles. But where is the Printer Book?" he asked, his greed for independence inspired by the view of the other houses. If he'd stayed on Earth, and succeeded in going pro this year, he'd have moved into his own apartment – without roommates. He'd been excited to see his dad again, but also bummed that his opportunity to live independently had been pushed into the future by his move to Mars. Therefore, he'd been ecstatic when his dad told him he could have his own house, and absolutely overjoyed when told he could build it himself.

Tom walked over to a shelf – "All home construction is in here. Pay special attention to the plumbing modules – getting those right is essential, for obvious reasons. In fact, I'd recommend you pause after the first foundational build and ensure the plumbing is aligned correctly. It is not too difficult to cut out the piping sections and re-lay them when there is nothing on top of them, but once the upper layers are printed making a fix is nearly impossible. In fact, I'd say you'd have to live with your dad and wait until the Elevator has normalized the logistics network before we'd be able to get the parts necessary."

"Got it," said Dirk. "Pause for plumbing check."

"Your choices are also very limited – most of the architectural drawings in that Book have not been modified for Mars. Our walls, to enable the water storage used for cosmic ray shielding and thermal insulation, are extremely thick. No windows either - as you've noticed," Tom said. "That severely limits your design choices."

"But the Power Plant has skylights and windows," Dirk said.

"The Power Plant's light tube windows are specially coated sapphire. We installed them because at the beginning we didn't have a good feeling for our energy consumption and didn't want to have to spend energy on lights (transporting them here, installing, and powering them) to set up the Power Plant," explained Tom.

"I'd wondered about that."

"There are several reasons. First, it makes construction easier. Two, windows capable of standing up to the constant scouring by the sand and thus sufficient to block cosmic rays are both heavy in themselves and difficult to manufacture and thus expensive. Three, back on Earth people have lost interest in windows – a static view of some other building is simply insufficiently interesting. Most people are in an augmented reality anyway, and can present themselves with whatever computer generated scenes they want to enjoy – Kailua beaches, San Gorgonio peak, the high desert of New Mexico, Balinese beaches, the veldt, and so on. Windows have thus become a waste of space, better replaced by screens."

"Then why do you walk all the way to the bridge as your office?" Dirk asked.

"I love the view," Tom said. "When underway I'd spend my watches staring out into space. Approaching an asteroid mining operation was especially fantastic – brightly illuminated, spinning softly against a backdrop of stars, or with Jupiter looming behind – fantastic! And now we live on Mars! Of course I want to see more than what is visible on the walk between the various City habitations."

Now that Dirk had seen the view, he had to agree. Life on Mars was still so new to him, and his walk to work gave him plenty of time to enjoy the view, (too much time in some cases) that he hadn't thought about those who worked inside.

"Thanks a lot, Tom, for the Printer Book. I'll get to work on figuring it out immediately."

"Why in such a hurry?" Tom asked. "Is living with your Dad that much of a bummer?"

"No, no," Dirk said. "Living with Dad is great! I'm going to build my house right next door to his actually. It is not that living with Dad is bad - having my own place is better."

"Yeah, I can understand that. I would have loved my own place at age 14. Remember what I said about the plumbing – I'll remind you again when we start construction. There are not that many choices, so decide in a day or so and get started on the actual construction by the end of the week."

"Great, thanks," said Dirk.

"Can you find your way out?" Tom asked.

"Yeah, once I've been somewhere I'm generally pretty good at finding my way back. Though if you hear frantic banging and screaming in a few hours you'll know its me."

Tom laughed. "Ok, see you later."

"See you."

# (20) Day 12 1630 A Maker makes a Martian home

Dirk made his way out of the ship without incident, and headed back to his room at his dad's house.

He linked the Printer Book to the large projection system and began flipping through the possible designs.

They were less than impressive. He'd wondered why there was so little variety in the buildings here and thought that perhaps it was due to the shieling requirement. However, as he looked through the plans and read the specifications for each building, he saw that the lack of variety was not due to technical limitations of the printer or the cosmic ray shielding demands. The limited quantity of building "ink" and the shielding affected the designs, but there was a lot more leeway within the specifications than anyone had taken advantage of.

"Perhaps no one willing to come to Mars really cares about architecture. They have other things on their minds," he thought.

Dirk was not in that position however. He had studied art history extensively, even though many of the buildings discussed had long since disappeared. He loved the ideas about living instantiated in the old buildings, like Gaudi's apartment buildings in Barcelona.

Yet his motivation to modify the available designs was not only driven by his interest in art history. Another factor also influenced his interest in tweaking the available designs – rock climbing.

His climbing ability constituted his main differentiator in the AR Games, and he'd planned on 'riding' that capability all the way to pros. Although he'd had to give up that dream, he was itching to climb more. The rifts on Mars were great. However, the requirements to wear the suit, carry all the extra water, and the safety aspect which mandated he only go with a buddy (and Tom was the only buddy he had, with a full schedule all his own) motivated him to create a home based solution that was both convenient and most importantly, challenging.

"This will require programming modifications," Dirk said to himself as he typed in the terminal prompt and worked his way past the admin layers into the root directory.

Dirk had some experience with such things. After he'd communicated his willingness to move to Mars the Company had immediately started sending preparatory materials. These included training programs for the Crane Farm and most importantly to his mind, a state of the art tablet, The Book. Using a holographic memory, the Book contained all the information about the Martian colony – including systems drawings and the technical manuals for every piece of gear on the planet.

However, Dirk was less pleased when he tried to download his own texts, music and video collections to the Book and was met with a 403 error – permissions denied.

Dirk called the Earth Company representative in charge of emigration

"Hi, this is Dirk – I'm heading to Mars to serve as your Crane Farm operator."

"Yes Dirk, welcome to the Company," the rep said.

"I've received my Book and am trying to go through it in order to prepare for the mission, but I cannot figure out how to upload my own material. I keep getting a 403 error 'Permissions denied'".

"Yeah....." the rep said.

"Not a good sign," thought Dirk.

"The Book contains primarily Company proprietary information. However, it also contains all the NASA information on Mars. Until five years ago such information was considered in the public domain. However, this Administration has retroactively asserted a Government copyright on that data and information. As a result, we have had to lock down the Books because otherwise the data would be sharable again online to the world, violating the terms of the copyright."

"Can't you get a site license?" Dirk asked. "Old government information can't be that expensive."

"You would think so, and I personally agree with you. But this administration believes differently – they feel that the Company should not be permitted to benefit from information generated at taxpayer expense. So they are retroactively charging."

"But the Company is a taxpayer!" Dirk said.

"You are preaching to the choir, friend."

"So I'm out of luck then," Dirk said after a pause.

"Afraid so."

"Ok, thanks," said Dirk, holding in the angry retort that was bubbling past his throat. It certainly wasn't the Company's fault.

His dad had made him take multiple programing certifications, which he up to then found less than useless. "Maybe they will come in handy now," he thought.

It took a few hours of research to determine the language in which the Book operating system was written. Once he had that he quickly figured out what machine language it used. Dirk reviewed some of his old courses and then dove in.

Cracking a Government protected book was not something you could search online for, but that didn't mean that it was extremely difficult to do. He wrote a few trial scripts, one of which provided root drive access. From there he was able to get into the Unix and really get to work.

He was bothered by the illegal aspect of the cracking, but justified it (self servinginly and with less than complete integrity) saying that since he wasn't going to give away the Government or Company data, it was ok under the "personal use" exemption. "I'm moving to Mars – I've got to take my shows, music and books." There was of course limited streaming of content from Earth, but when accustomed to thousands of movies and shows constantly available, the idea of a severely limited selection, curated by people much older than himself, was less than attractive.

Yet his morally ambiguous cracking effort was now coming in handy – the Printer Book had the same operating system. After about 20 minutes of looking at the coding associated with the provided templates he discerned a way to make the structural modifications he wanted.

"This is going to be great!" he said to himself as he began coding furiously.

# (21) Day 20 Home Revelation

"Ok Dirk, this looks good," Tom had said after completing his foundation and plumbing build inspection.

"Thanks for checking it out," Dirk said.

"I see you chose the Palladian plan, the basic two bedroom, two bath. Good choice."

"Yeah, simple and functional," Dirk said.

Following the foundation inspection, it took Dirk a week, to build his house. Of course, the printer really built it, but he had to monitor the process, responding to the occasional clogged nozzle or other problem. He timed the final build sequence so that it took place after dark. He wanted to surprise his dad and friends with what he'd designed.

"What is that!" his dad exclaimed. "That's not in the design Book," he said, smiling in amazement when he saw the tower on Dirk's house, rising above every other building except the ship and Power Plant.

"How did you make the tower?" asked his dad. "I know that is not a plan option."

Tom agreed. "The tower is higher than the printer! I noticed it when I passed by this morning. How'd you do that?"

Dirk, pleased by their admiration of his work, explained. "As you know, the printer elevates or unfolds itself, kind of like a spider raising up on its legs, as a result of the pressurization of the 'ink'. The 'ink' itself thus provides the tension in the structure. With that in mind, I build an extension for the ink head, moving it up and to the right."

"That's the great thing about additive manufacturing – you can use the printer to make more printer parts," his dad chimed in.

"Precisely," said Dirk. "Using the printer/3d milling machine, I made an additional pipe and junction sets. This enabled me to remove and reinstall the printer head at the new higher elevation on the extender."

"But how did you get the printer to print properly? It still thought the head was using the center of the printer as its 0,0 point, not a point up and to the right."

"That took a little reprogramming," Dirk said. "I had to put in an offset to get the printer to think the printer head was still at 0,0. I lost about 60% of the printing speed too because of the increased elevation – the pumps had to work harder to get the ink up there. But since the tower isn't that big it wasn't a problem."

"Impressive," said Mandy.

"Come on inside," Dirk said, leading the way.

The house opened into a large room, with the kitchen on the left and a couch on the right wall. The two bedrooms were straight ahead, each with their own bathroom. Three features of the space proved most amazing to the group: first, the walls were textured with what at first glance appeared as a complex pattern of shadows of varying intensity. On closer examination, they saw that they were created by indentations and protrusions on the walls and ceilings.

"You made a climbing gym!" exclaimed Tom.

Dirk beamed with pleasure as Tom began bouldering around the house. The protrusions and indentations continued up the tower, the opening of which was immediately in front of the bedrooms. Tom rapidly climbed up.

"Why the curves in the tower?" Tom asked as he started to climb up it.

"I wanted to be able to climb by myself, whenever I wanted, without someone on belay. Therefore I put the curves in so in the event of a catastrophic fail I don't plummet all the way down to the ground, but have a place to land in-between. It is possible to climb up and down uninterrupted though too."

"Brilliant" said Tom, as he disappeared from view.

"Nice job, Dirk," his dad said as he checked out the bedrooms. "Why did you make two bedrooms?"

"I figured I might want one later, so better to build it now."

"Good thinking," said his dad.

"So that's what you did with it!" yelled Tom from the top of the tower.

"What is he talking about?" asked Mandy.

"The light – I installed a solar tube at the top of the tower, and built additional tubes through the walls in order to allow the light to filter through the entire house. The solar tube blocks the cosmic rays but allows light. The curves in the tower mitigate stray cosmic rays," Dirk explained.

Tom descended from the tower. "Fantastic climb, Dirk! And there is so much variety. You'll never get bored. I thought you wanted the solar tube for one of the garages – this is a far superior application," he said.

"Your programming study really paid off," said his dad proudly.

Dirk smiled. Maybe Mars wasn't going to be so bad after all.

# (22) Day 21 0830 Making Crane Mods

Dirk opened the "garage" door. The 3D printed structure extended 3 meters from the rock face and was two meters high. The front opened like a shell to allow for vehicle ingress and egress. Dust from the storms still entered the shelter, but at low velocities so it did little damage – or so the Company designers had believed.

Dirk was finding out damage occurred – more than he liked. He had an idea to improve upon the push Crane he'd created. However, the Crane he wanted to work on wouldn't start. He ran through the pre-start checks contained in the Book a second time, without joy. Feeling the frustration welling up he did his best to tamp it down. Getting upset was utterly pointless - machines break. It is, as his dad often said, a result of "The perversity of inanimate objects". That is all there is to it.

He scanned to the troubleshooting section of the Book. It contained checklists for every possible problem, staring with "not starting".

"Check that the _on/off_ switch is in the on position."

"Check battery level."

"If level less than 10%, charge battery and return to step one."

And so on.

Dirk sighed and began working through the checklists. After completing the obvious checks he tackled the more esoteric ones.

"If I'd been to the maintenance school, I would have seen these, and the repairs they directed, at least once before." However, as his dad had explained when he had learned no actual classes were required for his new job, "The Company decided that online simulation training was sufficient to operate the Cranes (very simple devices due to the requirement they function in a wide range of harsh environments) for three reasons. One, they probably wouldn't fail catastrophically anyway, and two, any failures wouldn't materially affect the Space Elevator construction schedule. Therefore, the course cost exceeded the possible utility."

"What was the third reason?" Dirk asked.

"The Company has a lot of experience with people heading to space for long term work. Therefore, they knew that few people heading to Mars would be willing to attend the course - spending time to study to do something that would probably never happen was not an attractive prospect for people for whom the relative value of each minute they had on Earth increased geometrically with the approach of their Mars lift off."

"Makes sense, I guess," said Dirk to himself, "until you need to fix one of these puppies."

"Replace drive control motherboard," was the final step in the flow diagram governing the checklists.

"This looks like a simple change – I remove a panel on the console to the right front of the driver, take out the old motherboard and put in a new one. But where will I get a new one?" Dirk asked himself.

"I could put in a requisition for an emergency part delivery, but even that would take months." More importantly, Dirk dreaded the idea of making a formal request of the Company. "It wasn't my fault (I'm pretty sure) and the prospect of the attention and ensuing scrutiny of my actions is extremely unattractive."

He sat down in the drivers seat, in the dim light of the garage, and thought through his options. The Sky Cranes were equipped with wheels. On the larger asteroids, once they delivered their cargo, they were used for ore movement. The Crane turned (slowly) by varying the speed and or direction of the wheels, each of which was powered by its own electric motor.

"I wonder if the motherboard for all the Cranes is the same?" Dirk said to himself, the troubleshooting manual unable to help him at the moment.

This was a potentially fecund thought, because there were several Cranes in the "bone yard", the large garage where he parked the used Cranes.

"If the motherboards are the same, undamaged by sandstorms and time, and the programing for the controls was stored in memory not located on the motherboard, it should be possible to switch out the motherboard."

"There is only one way to find out," he said to himself, climbed out of the drivers seat, ducked through the door of the garage, closed it behind him (storms were unpredictable) and headed over to the control building to get his other bag of tools.

Radius was sitting in the control room. "Hey Radius, I'm cannibalizing one of the Cranes – want to watch?" Dirk said.

Dirk could almost see him trying to figure out the use of the word "cannibalism" in this context as Radius looked at him. Dirk laughed to himself – it wasn't often that he knew or understood something that Radius didn't.

Radius stood up. "Ok" he said, but with a lack of certainty.

Dirk took the tool bag with the screwdrivers and specialized tools designed to remove and replace Crane circuit boards.

They walked across the bone yard and Dirk stopped at the newest Crane, figuring it was most likely the least degraded by the Martian weather and old age. The only delivery for the day was a large Crane containing an elevator cable pulley. He referred to these massive loads as "Titans". It wasn't due for 5 hours, which gave him plenty of time to work on this project.

Opening the cover he peered inside, checking the layout against that shown in the Book. He broke the plastic seal covering the cards and removed the middle one, as the diagram indicated. After he did he realized he hadn't checked the Crane model number to see if it was the same family, and thus backward compatible with the Crane he wanted to repair. "Oh well, too late now," he said.

"What?" asked Radius?

"Nothing, I was muttering to myself," Dirk said.

"Ok," said Radius.

Dirk snapped the panel closed, and put the card in an anti-static bag left over from a previous delivery. "Let's see if it works," Dirk said, and started walking over to the garage. Radius followed along.

Dirk opened the garage door and hopped into the driver's seat and looked for the model number. "LM2500". It matched. He let out a sigh of relief and removed the malfunctioning motherboard from console, and put it on the workbench.

Sitting back down in the driver's seat, he removed the replacement panel from his protective bag. "Now for the moment of truth," he said, the new card in his hand.

Placing the replacement card in the slot, he gently pressed down – click. It fit!

"Sweet!" Dirk said, excited. He flipped through the Book and started the "After repair start checklist". He didn't want to screw something up now.

"Check battery level. If battery level is below 10%, charge before starting."

"73.2 %" Dirk said out loud, working through the checklist.

"Turn the on/off switch to the on position."

"Here we go," he said to Radius.

Click.

The panel lights illuminated at the same moment the "stray package" alarm sounded.

# (23) Day 21 1030 Injury

"Whoa!" said Dirk at first thinking he'd caused the alarm, not immediately realizing the alarm had nothing to do with his current efforts. "We've got to move!"

Dirk grabbed the tool bag, sprinted out the garage, hitting the "down/close" switch on the way out, and started running. The garage was further away from the emergency shelter than their normal watch station, so Dirk knew that his timing was all off.

Radius had pulled ahead. Suddenly he stopped and yelled at Dirk: "Drop the tools!"

It was very good advice - he dropped the bag and caught up to Radius.

They ran to the shelter, the alarm still sounding the alert. As they hunkered down it shifted to the "impact imminent siren" and Dirk thought about his dad and mom back on Earth.

"The pulley is huge and heavy – even a near miss could be fatal. But why is it so early?" Dirk thought. He looked at the monitor in the shelter – the package was close. At 15 seconds to impact the package appeared to drift far to the East. The alarm stopped. Dirk listened for the muffled impact of the crash.

But it never came.

Dirk waited, crouched down in the shelter.

"High priority package location approximately 2.7 kilometers on bearing 087" appeared on the monitor.

"Area D," Radius said.

"High priority package?" Dirk said aloud. "What package? No packages were scheduled. Radius, were there any other packages for today?"

Radius paused, even though he didn't need to – he had developed the habit of pausing before answering questions to avoid stepping on his interlocutors. If he answered as soon as he had successfully anticipated the question and formulated a response he could start answering before the human was finished asking, which they seemed to find annoying. It was another example of the strange hybrid condition of being a robot on Mars. He was treated as a companion, more than he would be on Earth, and so in several ways had to act less like a robot. In some situations this was due to a self-throttling back, like a restrictor on a Nascar engine. In others it was an actual restriction, resulting from the time and distance from the Earth based "cloud". Instead of the normal procedure of, in response to a query, providing information based on the collective intelligence of 10 billion people and the hyper connected Internet of Things through cloud based search he had to retrieve information he assessed as relevant, analyze that information, and formulate a response from his own local holographic memory.

"No packages scheduled. Astray package is a high priority diplomatic pouch."

That explained it. The Company would never schedule another delivery on the days when the Titan Cranes were scheduled. No point in adding a complication to the already extensive set of opportunities for the Galactic Ghoul to wreck havoc on a delivery. Better to keep them temporally separated and thereby simplify the problem as much as possible.

"We better go get it," Dirk said grudgingly. He checked the Book for the schedule for the main delivery. Now that the Crane was fixed he actually had enough time to get the other package. He hadn't known how long the repair was going to take. If he'd had to try several different motherboards it could have taken him all day.

"The tools," Radius said, as Dirk arose and climbed out of the shelter.

"Oh yeah," Dirk responded sheepishly. His panicked run was a little embarrassing in hindsight. They walked back to the tool bag. A couple had spilled out of the bag when he'd dropped it, but nothing appeared broken. He zipped the bag closed and headed to the garage to make sure he'd turned off the Crane so he didn't run down the battery after having fixed the darn thing.

He hadn't turned it off, and did now. "We should grab some water before going out there," he said to Radius.

"I'll get it," Radius said, and turned back to the main control station.

"Let's meet at the southern radar receiver," Dirk said.

"Ok."

Dirk walked toward the far end of the port. They had to go East, but he didn't want to climb the berm and then go through the widest and deepest part of the ravine that bordered the eastern edge of the Crane Farm. The ravine was much shallower at the bottom end of the landing area, and they could cross to the south and then work their way back further north to get back on track. The area of uncertainty for the stray package's location at 2.7 km was 500 meters, and there was no telling how long the beacon would last. He might have to wander around for a couple of hours to find it – "Better save some energy while I can," he thought.

As Dirk passed the southern radar repeater Radius caught up carrying a backpack.

After a boulder field the land leveled out to a sizable plateau. Most packages were visible then, so he'd take a quick visual fix against a mountain peak in the far distance in case the signal died, and head out to get them. No such luck this time. Nothing in sight, and the signal was weakening rapidly.

"Ugh," said Dirk, looking at Radius. "Let's spread out – I'll head north a little and you start going straight out here. You keep the main track and I'll adjust to you."

"Roger," said Radius.

Radius could navigate based on the WiMAX signal from the port, while they had it. In addition, he could acquire fixes on the limited Mars Global Positioning System (MGPS) to a limited extent. That quickly drained his power, however, so they generally only used it in emergencies.

More usefully in these situations he could also dead reckon, creating a track by counting his steps and mapping them on the topographic maps he had stored in his flash random access memory (RAM). Dirk had him download these tracks periodically – he enjoyed looking at the ground they'd covered, ground no one else in history, Terran and Martian, had covered before.

In 30 minutes they reached the end of the plateau and the signal still indicated that the package was due east. They'd have to cross another ravine, and now their time was growing short – they should be back in the control station 30 minutes before the package was due to arrive – that gave them two and a half hours to find the package and return.

"Where do you think we should focus?" Dirk asked Radius, knowing Radius could acquire a bearing and estimate range to the package from the signal strength, and then extrapolate to produce a more refined area of uncertainty in which to search.

"093 relative" Radius said. That bearing took them down into another wide (it extended both to their left and right) but narrow ravine.

"Do you think we can jump it?" asked Dirk, eyeing the chasm. Jumping would save a lot of time, but if he or Radius fell short they faced a long walk back injured.

Radius did some calculations and quickly decided that it was too far. "No, too far. You have only a 20% chance of making it." He didn't mention that he could, since Dirk's jumping ability constituted the limiting factor.

On Earth, where the stakes were lower and assistance closer, Dirk would have taken the leap – it would be shameful not to. He'd made similar leaps in the past, in greater gravity. But he didn't second-guess Radius – that sort of immature foolishness would get him killed. Even if a distress call made it back, someone would have to come on foot to find them, and a fall of 20 feet, even on Mars, could do sufficient damage that the couple of hours required for rescue could prove fatal.

"Let's find a place to climb down then - hurry. That signal is going to fail any minute and we still have to get back to the port for today's actually scheduled delivery" Dirk said.

He scanned the map on the Book. "According to the Book, there is a small crater on the other side of the ravine. Maybe the package is in there, and that's why the signal is so weak."

Radius moved south, scanning for the signal and surveying the ravine. Dirk walked quickly past him – he'd seen a spot he thought looked promising. He stopped and drank from the water bottle Radius had brought him. The suit filtered sweat and urine, and put it back into the drinkable reservoir, but his level indicator was blinking "Red". He'd consumed most of his water while working on the Crane, and had been in such a hurry to retrieve the package that he hadn't filled up the suit reservoir and his extra pouch in the backpack before he took off –not smart, and he was paying for it now. If Radius hadn't brought water he'd be in serious trouble already. He took a slow sip and stopped, still thirsty but wanting to save some to moisten his mouth with, at least, on the hike back once they had retrieved that dumb package. He'd only been on Mars for a few months, and he was already sick and tired of always having to worry about water whenever he left the confines of the City.

"Even for a day at the Crane Farm I have to carry my own water (about four liters) down from the City, walking like a 20th century village girl from the local well. And that four liters is barely enough to get through the day," Dirk thought.

Initially, he'd been angry with his dad for forcing him to take four liters. However, the air on Mars, like the high windy deserts of the Tibetan plateau, was extremely dry. Only the recycling ability of the 'sweatsuit' enabled him to comfortably make it through the day, especially when chasing a stray screamer, on what was actually a small quantity of water.

"I'll be glad when the elevator is working and the Company can deliver more water, in useable containers (instead of crashing snowball comets into the planet as they had done for the first 90 years of the terraforming effort)," he thought.

There was actually plenty of water on Mars, but it was still mostly stuck in the permafrost. The 100 years of terraforming made the ground soggy during the summer in the temperate zone at lower altitudes. However, the altitude and geology of the City (they hadn't wanted to build the City in a future lake) meant that there was little useful surface water other than that created by the moles. All the water the City produced was stored in tanks or in the greenhouses in order to limit evaporation. So while supposedly some lakes and even creeks were forming in the Northern lowlands, they did thirsty Dirk no good at the moment.

Pushing the thought of water from his mind, he surveyed the rift and returned his attention to the immediate problem at hand.

"Radius, check this out. We can go down here, brace against that rock face, and then spider walk along to that collapsed section. That will get us down, across and over in two minutes," Dirk said.

Radius didn't object, and so after checking his watch again Dirk began the climb.

He scrambled down, and jumped into the gap, landing with his feet pushing against each wall. Swiveling to the right, he grabbed the easternmost face and pulled himself over. He then moved laterally to the collapsed section and easily walked up.

About 100 meters away he saw what looked like a bright yellow rock. There was nothing that color on Mars, so it must be part of the deflated balloon structure that cushioned the landing. "Come on Radius. I think I can see the package from here."

He started to rush off, but realized he should wait for Radius and looked back. Radius was following his lead, copying his movements. Radius weighed about 50 pounds more than Dirk, but still, if a hold could support Dirk it would probably support Radius. Radius, with less effort than Dirk since his arms and legs were longer, placed his feet and reached for the handholds on the eastern wall.

After one complete move along the rift face Radius abruptly slid down the wall about half a meter and stopped. Dirk couldn't see all of him, and couldn't tell precisely what had happened.

"Radius, you ok?" he yelled.

"No," said Radius, but kept moving toward the collapsed section. He right foot had slipped as he moved across the rock face – the resulting shift in weight had damaged his left knee – as his body slid down, the inner side of his knee assembly had crumpled. It was not designed, like the human knee is not, to take sudden laterally distributed loads. A human however, would have pivoted on the foot and ankle, saving the knee – Radius's programming was unable to perform such a chaotic movement as a result of the instantaneous input provided by the sudden collapse of the soil upon which he had shifted much of his weight as he switched his hand hold.

Radius climbed up using only his right leg and arms. Dirk rushed to his side and helped pull him out.

"What happened?" Dirk asked.

"My right foot slipped as I shifted my weight to move across the rock face. The resulting excessive transverse loading caused my left knee to collapse," Radius calmly replied.

Dirk looked at Radius' left leg - his left calf and foot were canted out at a 30-degree angle. Radius was standing calmly on his right as if nothing was the matter, but Dirk could tell by watching the way he had climbed up the collapsed section that his mobility was now severely restricted.

"Tell you what," Dirk said. "You sit here and rest – I'll go ahead and get the package. I think I can see the balloon from here. It's in the crater, as we thought. That is why the signal was so weak – we were only able to catch the upper signal lobes. Maybe when you've had a chance to rest you'll be able to walk better." Dirk strode off quickly.

As he walked he realized that what he'd said was pretty stupid. "Rest is not going to help Radius 'feel better'. If his knee is damaged it had to be repaired or replaced – resting won't help at all. Radius could have been designed with a self healing capability, but the cost associated with that was so much greater than replacing the broken parts when they occurred (even when those parts had to get to Mars) that it didn't make sense," he thought.

Based on the cursory visual analysis Dirk couldn't tell if it was a repairable fault and he had no idea what parts were available on planet.

"I'll have to figure that out once we are safely back in town. Now I have two critical tasks requiring my full focus \- grabbing the package, and getting back to the port before the next package arrives."

The crater was fairly smooth, and after a couple of minutes he was able to see that the yellow shape was in fact the package. He walked quickly, with long strides, to the package, hoping it was small and light. Not only was he going to have to carry the package alone now, he'd have to help Radius walk as well.

"Diplomatic pouch!" he said disgustedly. "And it is super light! No wonder it floated so far off course."

"Its crazy the Company has to eat the cost of delivering this stuff. What could be so important?" He picked up the shoebox-sized package.

"This won't slow us down much," Dirk said to himself, and headed back to Radius.

# (24) Day 21 1305 A Long Heavy Hike

Upon reaching Radius, Dirk paused to drink most of his water – no point in carrying the extra weight anywhere other than in his stomach and bloodstream. He'd sweated quite a bit racing out to get the package. The guidance provided by the Company concerning package retrieval in his online orientation training consisted primarily of the general rule to "move such that you avoid overexertion indicated by perspiration." To Dirk's mind, and based on his experience, that guidance failed to take two key factors into account. First, although Mars was generally cold, in the template zone where the City was located (even before the terraforming had begun) temperatures of 10 to 20 degrees Celsius during the spring and summer were not uncommon. After 100 years of terraforming, 25 degree Celsius highs occurred occasionally. Second, the suit designed to protect from cosmic rays and rapid dehydration was incredibly warm – hence the 'sweatsuit' nickname.

Therefore, Dirk always (almost always) filled up the storage bladders on the suits, and still frequently ran out of water. He didn't know if it was because of the nature of his work, tramping around the Crane Farm and retrieving stray packages or that he was used to moving a lot and didn't have the discipline to slow down.

He'd asked his dad about it, and to his surprise (especially since he realized that his dad knew that a not insignificant portion of his water usage was due to rock climbing and parkour practice) his dad was not displeased by his excessive water use.

"Son, I'm not too worried about you burning through water as you work. You are now in effect the single point of failure in the effort to get the Elevator built. Keeping you hydrated is essential for the entire project, and the project is the keystone of the Martian development program. Once the Elevator installation is complete we'll both increase our capability to safely import water from asteroids and load the equipment and systems necessary to melt the water already here but currently locked up in unusable forms. Elevator completion will ensure we not only have sufficient water for daily use, but an emergency reserve.

"What do you mean, 'emergency reserve," asked Dirk. "I thought the ship was our emergency supply."

'It is," said his dad, "And there is some surface water emerging due to the microclimate created by the greenhouses and power plant. However, if anything catastrophic happened to the Power Plant or heaven forbid, the ship, we'd be completely out of luck. Humans can survive for only three days at most without water. I'd feel much better with an additional supply."

"So maybe I should be more conservation minded," Dirk said.

"No," said his dad with a laugh. "If you weren't going through so much water I'd suspect you were malingering, playing video games instead of working."

So his only regret at the moment was that he lacked even more water to consume – he had a critical task to perform, getting Radius (and himself) back to the port in time to receive the Titan delivery.

Radius stood balanced on his good right leg, with his left leg still bent at a 30-degree angle out to the side.

"Ok Radius," Dirk said, "Let's get started. This thing is superlight, and will fit in my backpack, which you'll have to wear - I'm going to wear you."

"Say again?" said Radius.

"Here's what we are going to do. You'll hold onto my shoulders and with your good leg you'll take as much of your weight as you can. We'll spider along the chasm, heading down to that narrow section. When we get there, you'll shift over, then I'll shift, and I'll push you up until you can grab the top and haul yourself over. Then I'll climb up and we'll think about the walk back."

"Ok," said Radius. "That will put huge stresses on your arms and hands."

"Well," said Dirk with a smile, "It will make me stronger for the next race with Tom."

"Ok," said Radius, and put his arm around Dirk's shoulders.

"A human would have asked how we were going to get across the jump," Dirk thought to himself. "But robots don't ask useless questions. He knew I'd explain."

The first weight shift caught Dirk off guard – it shouldn't have, but it did. He squeezed hard on the rock with his hands and pushed up on the thin footholds. Radius wedged his right foot into a crack and the weight became manageable.

"That was harder than expected," Dirk thought to himself as he breathed heavily on the surface, the transit completed. Although he hadn't said anything during the climb, it had constituted a major challenge – his forearms were still burning with the lactic acid from the exertion. The few seconds before Radius picked up his foot and found his next foothold had severely taxed Dirk's climbing capabilities.

Shaking out his arms as Radius stood calmly on his right leg, Dirk said, "This is going to be much easier."

"Indeed," said Radius.

"Ok, let's go slowly. When I say 'left' you can shift your right foot, and I'll step with my right. Wait - instead of 'left' I'll say 'step'. I'll get confused otherwise," Dirk laughed.

"So, I say 'step' you step with your right foot, I step with my left keeping our weight on my right leg, and then we'll switch."

"Roger," said Radius.

"Let's go – slowly" Dirk said, remembering the unpleasant surprise of that first 'belay' during the climb.

"Step!"

It worked. Moving slowly, they gradually worked up to almost a normal pace. However, any major rocks or cracks brought them to a complete stop. Radius was too heavy for Dirk to adjust their course while in motion. Dirk would either move ahead, in effect turning them to the right, or back up aligning them to the left. After passing the obstacle they shifted the opposite way to resume their intended track to the Crane Farm.

As Dirk said, "Halfway there!" pleased with their time, Radius fell to the ground, pulling Dirk down with him.

"Oof!" Dirk picked himself up and looked at Radius – Radius was holding himself up as if doing a pushup leaning to his right side – his left leg from the knee down was laying on the ground. A dark puddle had formed below his broken left leg.

"Radius, what happened?" Dirk asked, stupidly. The walking had obviously stressed the remaining "joint and tendons" in Radius' leg and it had broken off. Dirk had probably had them moving too quickly.

"What is that fluid leaking out?" Dirk asked, not giving Radius time to answer his first question.

"Coolant," said Radius.

"From where?" Asked Dirk.

"All robots of my model have a cooling system that circulates fluid around our batteries and then out to our extremities. We have panels in our legs that act like an elephant's ears, allowing the heat to dissipate in the air. That fluid is leaking from my cooling system," explained Radius.

"Can you make it stop?" Dirk asked, concerned. He was so sensitized to water issues, living on a desert planet, that he immediately treated the leak as a major problem.

"No. I can stop the pump but would then soon overheat. This seems to be an issue that while not significant on Earth (I could shut down and be transported to a repair facility) is a major problem here."

Dirk thought quickly. "We can put a tourniquet on it, using my belt."

"Won't work," said Radius, shaking his head, still in the pushup position. My leg is non-compressible, so you cannot exert pressure on the hose."

"Here," Dirk said, knelling at Radius's right side. "Let me roll you over at least so we can elevate the leg while we think about it. Now you are just draining it." Radius picked up one arm and then other allowing Dirk to remove the backpack Radius still wore.

Dirk pulled Radius over and using his own legs as a ramp, slid him down onto his back.

"Elevate your leg," Dirk said, helping him. The coolant stopped flowing.

"It's working!" Dirk said. But after another 30 seconds the coolant resumed leaking.

"Maybe we can plug the leak," Dirk suggested.

"I don't think we have the materials necessary to fabricate a plug here," said Radius.

"The bag!" Dirk said.

"What?" Said Radius.

"The bag the delivery came in. There is always plastic wrapping around whatever has been shipped because of the contamination controls. We could wrap your leg in that, and tie it off, containing the leak."

"Yes, but, " said Radius, "It is illegal to open the diplomatic pouches."

Dirk paused. "We won't open the package, we'll unwrap it. It is probably covered with some other wrapper."

The plastic wrap prevented microorganisms from contaminating the product, so another wrapper preserving the concealed nature of the package was unlikely – unwrapping was thus a risk.

More concerned with Radius than package protection, Dirk removed the package from the backpack. He'd already discarded the yellow landing cushioning. The diplomatic pouch was a heavy zippered black bag. Unlike on Earth, the bag was unlocked. A lock to be effective would have to be heavy, and since there was no way to avoid detection if someone had wanted to steal it (the custody chain had only a few links) there was no point in wasting the energy to transport the lock.

The package was about the size of a shoebox, and very light. He carefully removed the plastic surrounding the box, but didn't open the box itself.

Pulling his riggers belt off he knelt down next to Radius' "bleeding" leg and quickly wrapped the plastic around the broken joint. He then took his belt and wrapped it tightly around the bag, holding it closed against the leg. He fed the end of the belt over and under the clasp and pulled it tight. "Lower your leg, Radius," He said. Dirk gently put his knee on the back of Radius' leg and carefully pulled hard on the belt, ensuring it was tight as he could make it.

"Give it a minute."

Radius lay there.

The fluid began to pool in the bag, but did not seem to be leaking out.

"Looks good," said Radius. "Thanks for the expeditious repair."

"I wouldn't say repair – patch job, maybe." Dirk helped Radius stand up. He put Radius' leg in the backpack with the package. He zipped up the backpack with the foot sticking out of the top.

How is your other leg?" Dirk asked.

Radius looked down – "Fine" he said. "Though we should go carefully so I don't stress it any more than necessary."

They started walking again, more slowly this time. Dirk was getting tired. Robots were self propelled, or would use the transportation available to the humans with whom they were working – there was no reason therefore to economize their weight. In addition, on Earth power was effectively unlimited, and though Radius had been modified somewhat for Mars use, the modifications were similar to those made for robots working in extreme environments on Earth. The robotic skin was more robust to handle dust storms and the cooling system more advanced, but this resilience enhancing did not extend to weight reduction.

Dirk was regretting that design decision now.

After 10 minutes Radius spoke up – "Someone is coming toward us."

Dirk looked up from the ground where he had been carefully choosing his steps. "Hey, that's my Dad!"

Dirk and Radius kept walking.

# (25) Day 21 1445 Dad Helps

"Hey Dad, what are you doing here?" Dirk yelled when his dad was in range.

His dad broke into a jog and when he reached them exclaimed, "What happened to you Radius?"

"I broke my left knee joint traversing a rift face as we pursued another stray package," Radius answered.

"That's terrible!" Dirk's dad responded. "Where is your lower leg now?

"It's in the backpack." Mr. K walked around and saw the foot protruding from the backpack.

Dirk spoke up. "I'm afraid were are going to have to replace the entire leg – the connection joint seems to have sheared off. But Dad, why are you out here anyway?"

"I heard there was a stray alarm, and when you didn't answer came out to look for you," Mr. K said. "Where did it happen?"

Dirk turned slightly (he didn't want to spend the energy to turn he and Radius all the way around and pointed back over his shoulder.

"You see that row of rocks, slightly darker than the rest of the ground, about a mile east? That line of rocks is the edge of the rift. If you look down about two o'clock that is where it happened. We found the package in a crater not too far past the rift."

"And you had to help Radius the entire way back?" Mr. K asked as he took the backpack, and maneuvered into position on Radius' right side to help him walk the rest of the way to the Control Tower.

As they reached the Tower, Dirk said, "Whew, that was quite a hike. Radius, you should lay off the cookies man, you're heavy!"

They lowered Radius into a chair.

"Dirk, are you still wearing your weight vest?" Mr. K asked.

Radius looked at Dirk and Dirk looked back – "Brilliant," he said. "I sure am."

Mr. K laughed, "That intensified the workout."

# (26) Day 21 1600 Package delivery

Dirk and his dad drank a liter each of water and sat down for a few minutes. "Radius, are you ok for now?" Dirk asked. "The Titan Crane is due in 15 minutes. Once we get that taken care of I'll drive you up to the repair shop."

"Will you be able to manage the delivery on your own?" asked Radius.

"Sure," Dirk replied, actually uncertain about his ability to move the Titan load off the landing pad.

"Hey son, want me to stay here and help you move the Titan?" his dad asked as they walked over to the control tower.

"No, thanks. I realized I can use the Land Crane I refueled to tow the load and the Titan."

"You refueled a Crane? How'd you do that?" his dad asked, surprised. "We didn't plan for Crane refueling at this point."

"I can show you later. I reconfigured one of the Cranes that was almost completely out of fuel as a pump/transfer manifold. Since the pumps are driven by electric motors, like everything else on the Crane, I routed the power directly to the fuel pump and detached the intake and discharge lines. Now when I start that Crane, it powers only the fuel pump. I put the intake on the Crane from which I want to extract fuel, and fill the one I want to use."

"Great thinking!" his dad said, slapping him on the back. "And you've increased your productivity 1000%. We should have thought of that. Zero waste!"

"Thanks, Dad. I need to land this Titan now. I'll meet you later."

"Ok - take care of Radius," he said.

"Will do," Dirk replied.

Dirk turned the Tow Crane, as he now referred to it, toward the City, and accelerated up the berm. He enjoyed driving the Crane, and almost started smiling – "This is not a pleasure trip- Radius is injured," he admonished himself.

A small smile persisting on his face, they made good time back to the City and he drove up to City Hall.

Diplo pouch in hand, he unnecessarily said, "Wait here," to Radius. "I'll be right back."

"Roger," said Radius.

Dirk walked in and headed down the hall to the police office. Only for late night deliveries did he have to ring the bell. The rest of the time the door to the preliminary scan area remained open. There was no wait – he'd never seen any other citizens in there, or even heard of someone visiting.

"Package delivery," he said loudly.

After a minute he heard the Sergeant coming down the stairs.

"Hand the package to me now," the Sergeant said as he stopped a few feet in from Dirk, so Dirk had to walk toward him to hand the package over.

Dirk tried to not let his annoyance show, though he was glad the Sergeant didn't mention the lack of packaging.

"Very well, Dirk," the Sergeant, said. "You may go now."

"Ok," Dirk said, purposely omitting the "Yes sir, have a nice day" or some other pleasantry that would have both been extended to him on Earth and expected in return. "Maybe the Sergeant was socially retarded before arriving here – perhaps that's why he came to Mars," Dirk thought. "But that is no reason for unnecessary rudeness."

Only on planet for a relatively short time, even Dirk understood that courtesy dominated social interaction on Mars, much more than on Earth. The lack of anywhere else to go after fighting with someone made it especially necessary to get along. Courtesy, a social lubricant, was employed liberally. The formality of address provided a buffer between people, helping to reduce interpersonal conflict. It had taken a week or so, and a couple of lectures from his dad, before Dirk grasped the utility of the program, but the "Martian way" had now become a habit. The Sergeant had obviously not comprehended the message, or alternatively, he was purposely rude as a way to remind people of his official status, which rendered him, he seemed to think, beyond social considerations. Dirk wondered what he did every day and if he had any friends. It certainly didn't seem like it.

"Ok Radius, that's done. Now for the important stuff – taking care of you." They drove off.

# (27) Day 21 1700 The Sergeant and Director discuss Butterflies

"They arrived?" the Director asked.

"Yes Ma'am," the Sergeant said. He opened the box and began laying the objects on the table. They looked like electronic butterflies with oversized wings – drones. The wings, designed to enable them to fly in the less dense atmosphere of Mars were a liability in windstorms, which entailed that the drones were deployable only during periods of calm weather. However, since the object of their surveillance would also avoid going out and about during windstorms, this did not constitute a significant limitation on their utility.

"These little guys will restore 87% of our surveillance capability," the Sergeant explained. The previous set of drones had broken quickly in the Martian environment. This new batch was designed to last a year. The Director doubted they would actually last that long, but even 6 months would be enough to enable them keep tabs on anyone snooping around their various projects.

The Sergeant laid each of the butterflies out on the table with the built in charging capability. "They will be ready to deploy in about 30 minutes, but we can program them now," he explained.

He pushed at his tablet with the stylus and brought up a picture of Dirk. He then placed the tablet on the desk facing the drones. Grabbing another tablet, he brought up the drone control application and launched the "Acquaintance" portion of the set up program.

"This will enable the drones to recognize our subjects," he said. "They appear in order of age, from youngest to oldest."

"Except for the baby," the Director said. "Why isn't he in the system?"

"He is, but not in the surveillance system."

"Why not? He should be. What about the kidnapping risk? We could use the system to find him."

The Sergeant, thinking quickly for an appropriate response to the idiotic kidnapping rationale paused before defaulting to his customary reply – enthusiastic agreement. "You know, you are right. He should be in there. I hadn't bothered to put him in because I figured he wouldn't be doing anything on his own – we could track his parents and always find him, especially since this is such a small town."

The Director smiled smugly.

"You're right, you're right," the Sergeant repeated.

"Anyway," he said, shaking his head. "This review of the subjects will enable the drones to recognize everyone, except the baby, in the City."

The small light green LED on the drones began flashing. He then touched the surface of the tablet and the faces and identifying data of all the inhabitants of Mars scrolled across – all of it recorded by the drones.

"We can leave them to it," the Sergeant said.

"Very well," said the Director. "How is our other project coming along?"

"Nicely," said the Sergeant. "A paper message came with the drones – sales on the Moon are over $2 billion for this quarter."

"Excellent. No more about that. I'm going home."

"Yes ma'am," said the Sergeant.

# (28) Day 21 1630 Problem discovery

Dirk drove over to the spare parts depot. The entire City's spare parts were housed in a non-descript building without windows adjacent to the Power Plant. According to the original City design, there should only be one spare parts storage facility. However, shortly after Dirk arrived another restricted to 'Government Official's Only' was printed.

"That's crazy," Dirk had said to his dad as they watched the printer at work on the new building. "Why a separate building? They have very little equipment, and what they do have can be serviced out of the main facility, or by special orders."

"I don't understand it either," said Mr. K. "If they were paying for it themselves it would never be built, but they are using the taxes they charge the Company, so for them it is effectively 'free'. They waste materials on a whim..."

"Why build a spare parts storage facility anyway?" Dirk asked his dad. "There is plenty of room on the ship."

"Redundancy," his dad replied. 'We do store critical parts on the ship, but what if something happens to it?"

"Like what?" Dirk asked.

"It is the most complex piece of gear on the planet, full of fuel, machinery, and other flammable materials. All things susceptible to engineering causalities, including fire," explained his dad.

"Oh..." said Dirk, the significance slowly dawning on him as he remember the ventilation fan fire. "If a casualty destroys the ship, and spares were stored there, we'd be totally out of luck."

"Exactly," his dad replied. "Even this storage facility fails to provide the redundancy I'd like us to maintain. We are one deep for most systems. If not for Tom's genius we'd have been _in extemis_ more than once in the past year."

Dirk hadn't realized, when back on Earth, how often things broke and had to be fixed. Spare parts on Mars occupied an inordinate amount of space and a large percentage of the deliveries. On Earth broken or malfunctioning consumer electronics were sent back in exchange for immediate replacement delivery. It was annoying to have do without for a while (sometimes up to a full day!) but manageable. On Mars you had what you had, and made it work or did without.

Even additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, didn't help significantly. 3D printing could provide a lot of simple parts, but they had not yet delivered the full range of printer "ink" to Mars yet, so the utility of the printers was limited. In addition, several systems had been inadequately designed for actual Martian operating conditions. In an effort to economize (in part driven by Government requirements) the Company had decreased the robustness of, for example, the long-range pipelines system. This had proven to be, as his dad said, a false economy. Much of the metal printing ink was now unexpectedly dedicated to pipeline maintenance and repair, reducing the ability to print parts for non-essential, but highly desired by City inhabitants, consumer goods.

"Come on, Radius," Dirk said as he helped him out of the Crane and into the storage space. The parts distribution system was built like a Japanese vending machine. After tapping your communicator to the receiver pad, you opened the locker containing the desired part. Small, pilferable items were released one at a time. Larger items, whose size provided protection against theft, were stored in their own lockers.

The robot parts in storage were few, due to the small number of robots on the planet so far.

Dirk removed Radius' leg from the backpack and typed the part number of the knee joint into the tablet mounted inside the door.

"No luck," said Dirk. "Not in stock." We'll have to check for the entire leg. He typed the leg part number into the tablet.

"Success!" He said happily. "It is at 4337 DJ – H." He helped Radius to a table at the center of the room. "Radius, you wait here. No point in you climbing around to get your own leg."

"Ok," said Radius.

Dirk went back, found the locker, and opened it with his Company card. Radius was officially a "Cyborg" employee, with a "health" plan and retirement benefits. The robots of Radius' advanced type had not yet been around long enough to retire, but the legal framework was in place in case they ever wanted to. Some people thought it was a stupid concept. They could upgrade and never stop, but a robot civil rights case in the early part of the century had laid the groundwork for such benefits, and Radius was now 'covered'.

Dirk, as a lame and sort of mean joke had asked him one afternoon, "Hey Radius, what are you going to do when you retire?"

"I haven't thought about it," said Radius seriously. "What are you going to do?"

"That is too far in the future for me to even think about," said Dirk.

"Me too," agreed Radius.

He brought the leg back to Radius. "Should we do the repairs here or do you want to do it at home?" Dirk asked.

"The tools are here," said Radius. "It is more efficient to execute the replacement now."

"Ok," Dirk said. "Are you in the Book?"

"Yes," Radius answered. "Model number B-263-54."

Dirk typed it into the appropriate technical manual application on his Book and the schematics popped up.

"I'm going to skip the troubleshooting – we know what the problem is."

Dirk read for a few minutes standing, and then sat down on the table next to Radius. "This is going to take me a while to review – I don't want to mess you up more, and these parts are expensive."

"Understood," said Radius.

Finished reading the procedures, Dirk stood. "Ok, Alpha tool kit, which is right here," he said, opening a drawer near the door. "Radius, can you turn your circulatory system off yourself, or do I need to do it? Not the whole system, I mean, only to isolate the leg."

"No, if I could do that I would have done it when the break occurred. That is not part of my conscious control nervous system. My consciousness is not specifically tied to a body – I can use multiple body types and configurations. The split is a result of differences in the development rates of the cognitive and the physical hardware and software. The body actually runs my movement on its own – I give directional inputs and the body decides how to get there."

"Maybe there is a deficiency in that programming then. That would explain your poor lateral movement."

"No," said Radius. "The lateral movement deficiency is a trade off with forward motion speed. My designers decided that they should optimize carrying loads at high speed moving forward, assuming that there would be few times when my type would have to move laterally at high speed."

"Makes sense, I guess," agreed Dirk. "But it is sure is a bummer for you now."

"Indeed," said Radius.

"So I need to look up the flow/isolation diagram for your cooling system."

"Yes, but I can tell you the valve is in my lower back on the right hand side. It is colored light blue."

"Ok, let's roll you over." He pushed Radius up onto his right side and opened up the panel with a small screwdriver.

"I think I see it. But there are no handles and it is not a screw turn mechanism."

"You have to use the tool designed for the cooling system. It is the same color and is in the toolbox on the upper right hand side of the second shelf."

"You mean there is a different tool for every system? That's stupid."

"Actually, they did it as a secondary check to ensure careful maintenance. It forces a double check to ensure that the proper fitting is being turned. Misaligning the system by turning the valves, as it would with you, can cause rapid organ damage, increasing maintenance costs."

"Ok," said Dirk sheepishly.

Dirk assumed Radius was referring to ensuring humans performed the maintenance properly - back on Earth the maintenance was mostly done by other robots, who wouldn't make such mistakes.

Dirk closed the valve as Radius suggested and reread the section on removing the leg in the Book.

"I think I'm ready. Re-plumbing your cooling and hydraulic systems is going to be the hard part. The electrical connectors consist of simple cable sockets, but the hydraulic lines look tricky."

"Have you isolated the hydraulic system already?" Radius asked.

"No. I'm going to do that now. Ready?"

"Ready," said Radius.

Dirk turned the valve with the appropriate tool and then, using the adjustable wrench began disconnecting the hydraulic lines.

"Hey Radius, if it is ok with you I think I'm going to detach the leg first from your hip and then disconnect the cables. I think that will be easier – it will provide more play for the wrench."

"Ok," said Radius.

Dirk detached the leg from hip by releasing the tension on the assembly holding the main structural femur equivalent to the hip socket. He had to push Radius over a little on the table to give himself room to work. The procedure made the work much easier – he quickly detached the cooling and hydraulic hoses, losing only the fluid downstream of the values – it barely made a quarter sized puddle. He then attached the hoses and electrical junctions, pushed the leg back onto the socket, tightened down the joint and was done! Putting the tools in a pile on the table he stepped back, pleased with his work.

"Replace the tools," said Radius.

"Your welcome," said Dirk, a little annoyed, but placing the tools back in their specific holders. "Let's fill your hydraulic and cooling reservoirs and get this baby turned back on."

Dirk purchased coolant and hydraulic fluid and filled the two reservoirs accessed through Radius' back.

"Hang your leg over the side Radius," Dirk said. "The technical manual says to do that to ensure a complete fill and bleed off the air in the new leg."

After 10 minutes the fill completed.

"All right, you ready to energize?" Dirk asked.

"Ready", said Radius. Dirk turned the 'on' switch to the 'on' position with the appropriate screwdriver.

Nothing happened.

"Hold on, let me check the tech manual. Maybe I put something back together incorrectly."

Dirk read through the book and fiddled with Radius' leg. No joy.

"Did you check the indicator lights in the ankle?" Radius finally asked.

"No, it doesn't mention that in the Book," Dirk said.

"Read the section on general troubleshooting. It is in that section, and the first line of each procedure recommends checking those general steps first."

Dirk looked at the book again. "Oh." He said. "There it is. Sorry. Ok, let's look. We should have green, white, green. And..."

None of the lights were illuminated.

"No lights Radius. What does that mean?" Dirk asked as he typed in the Book.

"I'm going to take the leg off again and recheck the connections. Maybe I didn't get the socket seated properly," Dirk said.

Dirk detached the leg and rechecked all the connections. He put it back on and faced the facts. "Radius, I think it is a bad leg. It seems to be missing the motherboard."

"That's not good," Radius said. "Each limb is self controlled – containing its own processing capabilities."

"Why did they do that?" Dirk asked.

"As I alluded to earlier, by putting the movement specific processors in each of the limbs, the designers allowed for upgrades in limb capability to proceed without requiring corresponding upgrades in the control systems. My mind gives the most general sort of movement commands. The limbs execute those general commands in accordance with their capability levels. This means that the development of limbs, software, brain hardware, etc., can all proceed at different paces. For example, I can operate with 7.0 version legs and 4.0 version arms, 10.0 version hands and a 30.0 version brain. No mind/body compatibilities issues arise because my 'mind' makes the simplest of commands which are then interpreted and executed by the body," Radius explained.

"Ok," Dirk said. "But we need to install another leg. This is getting expensive."

Noticing they'd been working for two hours, and that Dirk had missed lunch, Radius asked, "Do you require a meal break?"

"No, let's get this done. I can't leave you here while I stuff my face."

"Thank you," said Radius.

Dirk went through the process again, faster this time. He triple checked the connections and before attaching the leg at the hip joint had an idea.

"Hey Radius, can I turn the leg on without completely seating it so we can test for response?"

"Yes, you can," said Radius. "As long as there is power you can cycle the leg."

"Great." Dirk powered the leg on.

Nothing.

"Not again!" Dirk said, frustrated. "Repairs shouldn't be this hard. We are not rebuilding a motherboard – we're only installing a leg. What now? This was the last left leg."

"What is behind the locked section?" Radius asked, pointing to the building addition the Government had printed.

"That's a good question." Dirk walked over. "And it is locked with a padlock! That is weird. Why would anyone lock a bunch of lockers that you have to open with your communicator? When a locker is opened it is recorded and charged, and there is no one here to steal anything anyway. Where would they go?"

Dirk peered through the gaps between the thin, but rigid strings of metal from floor to ceiling that fence like, blocked the entrance.

"Looks like it is another complete set of spare parts lockers. I wonder why? We can ask Tom. Maybe they are for the Power Plant or some other activity we don't know about – but tonight it means you are hobbling home.

"Is there anything we can fashion a crutch out of?" Radius asked. Dirk looked around. There was not the usual bunch of junk that accumulates near a Power Plant, because if it wasn't necessary it would not have been brought to Mars, but there was some piping and pressurized bottles of leftover construction patching foam.

Dirk sorted through the stuff for minute and returned with a six-foot length of pipe, some duct tape and foam.

"How about this?" he asked. Dirk made a basket out of tape at one end of the pipe. He then covered the final spaces in the basket to make a tape bag.

"Get ready to stand," he said to Radius. Dirk sprayed the insulation foam into the tape bag and put a last bit of tape over the remaining holes.

"Stand up, Radius, and put this under your arm. The foam will harden to form the crutch top. You'll have to grip the pipe, but that won't be a problem for you, right, with those super hands?"

Radius stood with Dirk's help and gently rested his weight on the top of the crutch, allowing the foam to harden in position.

"I'm impressed," he said. "It fits perfectly."

"Your welcome. Let's go get some dinner. Then we'll ask Tom about the cage."

"Very well," said Radius.

# (29) Day 21 2100 A cage mystery

They stopped at Dirk's house and Dirk grabbed a sandwich. Leaving Radius at the house he headed over to see Tom.

"Hey Dirk, we are putting T2 to bed. Be out in a minute," Tom said, letting Dirk in the house.

"Ok," said Dirk. He sat in the living room for a few minutes looking at some books while Tom and his wife Mandy performed T2's bedtime routine.

"Hi Dirk," Tom said softly as he came into the living room.

"Hey Tom," Dirk said. "What's in the building addition behind the cage barrier adjacent to PowerGEN3?"

Tom thought for a moment. "You mean the spare parts lockers? Spare parts." He laughed.

"I know that. I mean, what is in the set of lockers locked behind the fencing in the building addition?"

"What do you mean?" Tom asked. "I can only remember the spare parts lockers. You grabbed the macerator parts for me from there last week, remember?"

"Yeah, I know, but there is a fence dividing off part of the space. Let's go, and I'll show you."

"Ok," Tom said. "Be gentle with the door so you don't wake T2. Until he's been asleep for about 20 minutes the slightest noise can wake the little monkey up."

They left the house quietly.

"Why are you interested in the spare parts lockers? And where is Radius?"

Dirk explained his interest.

"Whoa," said Tom. "How is he now?"

"Fine I guess," Dirk said. "He'd be better if both legs we tried hadn't been duds."

They arrived at the building. Dirk's communicator opened the door and he immediately took Tom over to the gated area.

"This wasn't here before a month ago," he said. "Who put this here?"

"I don't know," said Dirk. "And check out the lock."

"This is a police lock used for confiscated buildings and in police stations. Why is it here?"

"I don't know man, - I'm asking you," Dirk said with a laugh.

"And why are there lockers behind the fence? This doesn't make any sense. And how did I not notice this?" Tom said, befuddled.

"You are pretty busy with other stuff. I suppose we could ask the Sergeant tomorrow," Dirk said.

"Yes, I suppose so," Tom agreed hesitantly. "Do you think any of those spare parts lockers hold a Radius compatible leg?"

"It sure looks like it," said Dirk. "See, here is the one where I unpacked the dud leg, and if you look over there the color designation is identical to the set on the wall behind the fence."

Tom looked. "I think you are right. I'd suggest we go now, but the Sergeant would not take kindly to being disturbed after his extensive working hours," Tom said.

Dirk smiled. The Sergeant was known as the laziest man on Mars.

"But we shouldn't leave Radius legless overnight," Tom concluded.

"He is a robot..." said Dirk.

"Yes," said Tom, "But with a highly developed consciousness. Some even say they are no less conscious, and thus no less people, than you or I."

"I'm not sure about that," Dirk said.

"Oh really," said Tom, getting a little annoyed. "And you know this how? Having to function without a leg is like you or I being immobilized in bed with a broken leg. Probably even worse because we can compensate and get around by crawling if we have too. Radius can't- he has cut outs intended to prevent movement when severely damaged to prevent additional harm to his locomotive systems."

"Then how did he use the crutches?" Dirk asked.

"The crutch based movement is within the general parameters. But he can't crawl; and anyway, you don't leave a friend injured when you can help him out."

"Ok," Dirk said. "But that is why I came to get you!" he said defensively attempting to deflect the problem on Tom. "I'm trying to help him out."

"Alright, alright" said Tom. "So what do we do now?"

"We could ask my Dad," suggested Dirk.

"That's a good idea, on the one hand, but I'm thinking he'll value plausible deniability if we do what I think is required."

Tom thought for a moment.

"Here's what we'll do. Take Radius to your dad's workshop. Then meet me at the compressor on the side of Cogeneration Unit 1. It's not online. Dress for parkour."

Not sure where Tom was going with this, Dirk agreed and headed home to take Radius to his dad's workshop.

By the time he arrived at his dad's house he thought he had figured out what Tom had in mind.

# (30) Day 21 2300 Radius' Data Analysis

Radius sat at home, with the sensation he referred to as his "uneasy condition" at high levels, for reasons that remained concealed. His vital signs, or key operational parameters, were in the normal range, thanks to the refill of coolant and hydraulic fluids. The feeling of unease was not due to a loss of power – he was sitting in his chair with the magnetic resonant charging built in. His balance was off because of the missing leg, but since he was sitting down that shouldn't be sufficiently significant to cause the overall system unease he was experiencing. Indeed, the sensation was not anything the normal metrics could track. He'd developed his own metrics for the sensation and had been recording them himself on his health app. He ran several quadratic equations changing the variable based on his experience of the unease sensation. Attributing a quantity to the sensation and graphing it mathematically, a language he felt more comfortable with in examining his own sensations than the languages available for recording in text provided insight into the condition. However, as he reviewed the graphs, he saw his sense of unease had reached its highest level, not when he was being helped back from the rift but immediately after Dirk had left him at home to talk to Tom. The data made him wish that he had a greater vocabulary with which to articulate the sensation – the height of the graph did not seem an adequate way to capture the full intensity of his experience (he didn't say 'feeling').

"What's the status?" asked Radius as Dirk walked in the door.

"Ummm, I think we are going to sneak into the fenced locker section and get you another leg."

Radius paused before answering, suspecting he was going to upset Dirk. "Isn't that stealing?"

Dirk had been thinking about this as he walked home from the storage building. "Theft requires taking something without paying for it, right? Therefore, it would be stealing if we were not acquiring the leg from the Company that imported the spare parts and funded your health plan. To open the locker required payment acknowledgement from the card – if you pay for something, that is not stealing, right? So to my mind, (for the most part) Tom's plan to break into the locker from the power plant is not stealing. Acquiring another leg is an appropriate response to a medical emergency," he thought to himself.

"However, the central question concerns who had put in the fence and the lock, and why. Nothing about this situation makes sense!"

"I've been thinking about that," said Dirk, his answer for Radius ready. "It'd be stealing if 1) we didn't pay for it, which we have to do to open the locker, and 2) if we didn't work for the Company that owns the spare parts. But since we are paying for it, and we work for the Company, (it is a Company planet after all – no Company, no life on Mars) we are not stealing."

"But it still looks like theft to an outside impartial observer," Radius said.

"You are right about that," Dirk said, "And if that outside observer is the Sergeant I'm a little bit nervous about his interpretation. Tom said that it was the kind of lock used by police forces on earth. Why go to the trouble of bringing such a heavy lock here?" he thought.

"Based on the evidence, I'm not sure this is proper, but if you are determined to go (which I also appreciate) you should go now," said Radius.

"Yeah, you're right. Wish me luck."

"Wait," said Radius. "You still have your weights on."

"Doh," said Dirk. "I sure as heck don't need them on now – we may have to move fast. Good catch. The forces of habit are strong."

Dirk took off his weighted clothes and dressed again. "I feel so much lighter! But it makes me sleepy, because I usually only feel this light when I shower and go to bed."

"No time to sleep now," said Radius.

"It is late. I'll be tired at work tomorrow – but hopefully you'll be restored to full operational capability and can do all the work," Dirk said with a smile, "While I nap in a garage."

"I hope so too," said Radius.

Dirk left the house quietly. It was now after midnight. He wasn't too worried about being heard. The houses were all so heavily insulated that little noise penetrated them. The low hum of the wind was barely perceptible, and everyone should be asleep – even the Sergeant.

A butterfly lifted of its charging pad atop City Hall for a routine patrol.

# (31) Day 22 0015 The Caper

He sent Tom a "." as a text, to let him know he was at the compressor by Cogeneration Unit 1. After a minute, (which seemed much longer) he was about to text Tom again when the door opened slowly.

"I was working on the access panel," Tom said, screwdriver in hand. "Come on."

Tom quickly led the way through the plant to the wall the main building shared with the storage addition.

"Whenever they build on additions they include penetrations through the shared walls for later installation of wires, piping, etc. If they are not used however, they secure the accesses with fire zone rated panels."

"What are 'fire zone panels'?" Dirk asked.

"Remember on the ship the signs on doors that said 'Fire zone door, keep shut'?" Tom asked.

Dirk thought for a minute. "Yes, and in hotels back on Earth," Dirk said.

"Exactly," Tom responded. "In a lot of industrial facilities, and on ships and spaceships, fire zone doors shut automatically when smoke or fire is detected. The doors are held in the 'open' position by magnets, and when the fire or some is detected anywhere in the building, the magnets turn off, releasing the doors."

"But why," Dirk asked.

"Most fatalities from fires are not from the actual flames, but from the smoke. The fire zone doors are intended to stop the movement of smoke through the building or ship."

"So the fire detectors also secure the ventilation systems, right?" Dirk asked.

"Yes," said Tom, pleased that Dirk had grasped the principle. "So in a building or ship you never design an opening that cannot be closed off. Penetrations in walls, ceilings and floors must be sealed so that they do not allow vapor to travel from room to room. That way it remains possible to isolate the space in the event of a fire. Otherwise the smoke and other hot expanding gasses that constitute a fire can spread unhindered through a building. As a result, a fire in one room can spread death through the entire building even if the flames never leave the room where the fire started."

"Now on Mars all industrial buildings are printed with penetrations leading to future potential buildings. If additions become necessary later, they can print more building, saving ink by using the sides of an existing structure and making it possible to route power or ventilation to the new space without putting a hole in the wall (which would be very difficult and mess up the cosmic ray shielding). However, if the penetration is not used, complete coverage is required to preserve the fire zone integrity."

"This is good to know, but how does this help us help Radius?" Dirk asked, impatiently.

"Piping and electrical runs won't help us here, but a fire zone cover will," Tom said.

"Why?" asked Dirk.

"Whoever put that fence in didn't do it to code. It is not an official alteration, or I would have to know about it. I suspect they are unaware of the other access to the space. The fence blocks access from the front of the room, but not from the wall it shares with this building..."

Dirk finally visualized what Tom meant. "There must be an access between this room and the storage locker, which they didn't think about because it was covered with a fire zone panel!"

Tom smiled. "And I removed the panel on this side. After we remove the panel on the other side, which we can do because this is the original building, we are in!"

"Brilliant!" said Dirk.

Tom led the way to the access panel he'd found, concealed behind the Number 1 Methane Storage Tank. It held the product of the melting methane crystals in the permafrost. The methane pipeline brought the methane to this first storage tank where it was held until needed. It then transited a series of filters and dehydrators to ensure sufficient purity to fuel the generators before it was transferred to the main power plant storage tanks. The tank, about ten meters tall, was the largest single item ever brought to Mars before the Elevator construction had begun. Tom climbed over the intake manifold and squeezed past a filter unit where he stopped and dropped to the ground. Dirk could see the first panel on the deck next to him, and Tom's tool bag on the ground next to it. This explained the delay following his text letting Tom know he was outside the power plant door.

"Ok Dirk, get on the other side of me, reach in, and hold the panel while I detach it from the housing. The door on this side was bolted, but the other panel is simply dogged down like a water or airtight door. When I turn the last dog (those lever things holding the door on) it will fall if you are not holding it. I doubt anyone could hear it, but there is no sense in taking chances."

"Roger," said Dirk.

Tom pulled the last dog, and the panel dropped to the floor. Dirk, unprepared for the surprisingly heavy hatch, allowed it to land on the floor with a "clang".

"Oh man, sorry," said Dirk.

Tom's expression showed he was displeased, but he said, "That's ok. If you hadn't been holding it the hatch would have made a lot more noise as it fell. You first, climb through." Dirk lowered the hatch to the ground, carefully, and climbed in.

A row of parts lockers was in front of him, pushed up against another row of lockers so that they were back to back. He turned on his mini green LED flashlight and scanned the covers, looking for the leg. Tom crawled through.

"I'll check the other side. What is the part number?" Tom asked.

"4337 DJ – H"

Tom began scanning the other side. Dirk finished his side and moved to the next row of lockers. The lockers were perpendicular to the fence, so from behind the fence, even though the locker doors were clear to facilitate part finding, one could not discern the locker contents.

"None of this makes sense," Dirk thought to himself, before he was interrupted by a quiet shout from Tom – "I've found it!"

Dirk quickly walked over to Tom and read the number on the locker – 4337 DJ-H.

"Great." Dirk activated his communicator to purchase the part and open the locker.

Tom reached out a hand and stopped him.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Tom asked. "You could be entering a world of hurt."

"Yeah, Radius and I discussed it. We are charging it to Radius' health plan, he's a Company employee, and these are Company parts. I don't know why they are locked up, but we need them to get Radius back on the job, and he has to get back on the job so we can get the elevator built. Right?"

Tom nodded. "I agree with you, but being right does not always keep people from getting in trouble."

"Tom, I really appreciate your help, but officially, I did this on my own, so don't worry."

"Have you talked to your dad about it?"

"No, in part because of the concerns you raised. I think 'plausible deniability' will better serve him than wading into this mess," said Dirk.

"Good thinking," said Tom. "Go for it then."

Dirk opened the locker, and unbeknownst to him, alerted the butterfly on patrol. It flew toward the Power Plant.

Dirk removed and performed a quick visual inspection on the leg. It seemed fine, but then so did the other ones - a cursory inspection of the exterior didn't tell him much. He'd stashed the installation tools at his house where Radius was waiting, so he could check it out there.

"Let's go," said Tom. "No point in hanging around here. These are on a local server, so whoever put them here knows the locker opened."

"Alright," said Dirk. "Let me put it in my backpack." He'd brought a hiking backpack with a hip belt, big enough to hold the complete leg. Bent at the knee, it fit such that he could close the top flap. It didn't look normal, but it wasn't obviously containing a leg either.

Dirk handed the backpack to Tom, who was already through the hatch and standing back in the Power Plant.

"Help me close the hatch and then you can take off," Tom said.

Dirk held the hatch up while Tom dogged it down.

"I'll stay here for a while, checking some readings. You should take the back exit. I'd not head directly home if I were you."

"Yeah, good thinking," said Dirk.

They walked to the back entrance, opened the first set of doors, closed them behind them to preserve the air barrier, and opened the exterior door a crack. Dirk peered out into the dual moonlit darkness. The two little moons made multiple shadows. He was pretty used to it now, but it did make the piping systems emerging from the Power Plant look especially eerie and beautiful. He'd always liked the abstract patterns of piping systems and power plants. Due to the Martian storms much of the Power Plant piping systems ran along the ground, covered with a protective printed housing. From the ship's bridge they looked like Tibetan mandalas.

Dirk scanned for anything unusual, and stepped back into the vestibule. "Hey Tom, you see anything out of the ordinary?" Tom leaned out and peered at the landscape for a moment.

"I think I saw one of the butterfly drones fly by," he said. "I can't be sure in that light, but nothing else flies here."

"Oh man, that isn't good. I didn't think they had any left." Dirk was quiet for a minute.

"I bet that was what was in the diplo pouch we were picking up when Radius was hurt! I'm going to have to move quickly to avoid that thing."

"Let me tighten up your backpack," Tom said, adjusting some of the straps. "You don't want to jangle or have this thing come undone while you are hauling across the Martian night."

"Thanks, Tom."

"Go."

Dirk shot out the doorway, keeping to the shadows until he reached the main intake pipeline for the methane from the 'mine'. He did a cat leap onto the upper part of the ladder and scrambled up. He paused by the Number 2 main isolation valve and looked around.

He saw the butterfly as it emerged silently from the north side of the Power Plant and immediately realized that on top of the pipeline was not a smart place to wait. He swung back down the ladder and crouched in the shadow of the pipe. This meant that he was not directly under the pipe, but slightly to the side. It wasn't much of a shadow from a concealment perspective. The two moons, both much smaller than Earth's, were closer and so provided a similar level of illumination as they were both nearly full. In addition, he soon realized, the drones must have full spectrum cameras, (including infrared) so the degree of illumination didn't really matter. If it noticed him, he was caught.

"But it hasn't noticed me yet," Dirk said to himself. He crawled over to the closest stanchion supporting the pipeline and leaned against it. The drone was circling the Power Plant. "I wonder how long Tom will stay inside," Dirk thought. He watched the drone for a few minuets, timing how long it took from when it disappeared around to the west side the building until it reappeared on the north east corner in his line of sight. Luckily it had chosen an altitude that put it below the level of the Power Plant's clerestory windows. As a result, when it was on the west side it could not see to the east. "It must have received an indication of activity in the plant and is focused on capturing imagery of whoever is inside," Dirk said to himself. "But it doesn't know what caused the alert, so maybe I'll get away undetected."

"If the butterfly maintains this search pattern," Dirk said to himself. "I'll have 30 seconds in which to move. That should create enough distance between myself and the Power Plant to provide some plausible deniability as to what I was doing running around in the middle of the night."

When the butterfly next flew out of sight Dirk took off, sprinting carefully to the south of the pipeline. "Even with the backpack and Radius' leg, without the heavy 'suit' I'm feeling light!" Dirk thought as he counted the seconds, sprinting along the pipeline. His goal, a booster pump assembly further upstream along the pipeline, would provide the necessary concealment during the butterfly's next circuit.

"24, 25, hide" he said to himself as he settled down on the east side of the booster pump assembly. He wanted to look for the butterfly, to see if it had noticed him, but controlled himself and instead looked at his watch, timing the search orbit. At 1 minute on his chronograph he was sprinting again to the next booster pump assembly.

And that was as far as he reached undetected. He looked up and behind him as he slid into position behind the pump assembly and saw the butterfly calmly following. As he sat there panting the butterfly orbited about 10 feet off the ground, above the top of the main pipeline header.

Dirk sat there for a few minutes, dejected, catching his breath and rapidly getting cold, even in the sweatsuit. He hadn't dressed for an extended stay in the middle of the night outdoors. He'd have to keep moving and get indoors soon.

He started walking, still heading out along the pipeline as he tried to figure out what to do. "On the bright side," he thought, "Since the butterfly is with me Tom should be able to get home undetected."

"I could say I was out for a run," he thought as he broke into a jog to stay warm. "Or better, that I wanted to work on my parkour in the City, and can practice more effectively without concerning myself with avoiding crashes onto fellow citizens."

"That could work," he thought. "It's the best I can think of now anyway."

Decision made, he scrambled up onto the pipeline, and began running, leaping over the valve stems and vaulting over the flow monitoring stations. Resisting the impulse to look at the butterfly, he snuck looks only occasionally after a jump, when a pause after landing would seem less suspicious.

"The bug's still on me," he said to himself after reaching the Power Plant and landing a front flip to the ground.

"Ouch! Nailed the landing but Radius' leg nailed me," he said rubbing the back of his head where the leg had whacked him. Shaking it off, began mapping out a route to showcase his parkour skills.

"I'll claim I was out for a workout because I couldn't sleep, and wore the backpack to challenge my balance and grip strength with some extra weight" Dirk thought. Realizing he was almost at Tom's house he tic tacked down between two houses to change direction and headed for the movie theater/assembly building. Muscle-uping onto the top of the front portico, he clambered onto the roof of the theater, the largest building in the City (not including the Power Plant or greenhouses) and stopped to enjoy the view. He had nothing more to lose – might as well give the butterfly a chance to get some good stills. "Maybe I can get a copy of the footage – I'd get millions of hits for that run back on Earth," he thought, a wave of homesicknesses and missing his friends washing over him. He hadn't really thought about his friends too much, intentionally. He'd talked to them a bit when he first arrived, and tried to participate in their usual online gaming activity, but the time lag was so big between Earth and Mars that he couldn't really play with them. They were always 20 minutes ahead of everything he did.

"This would be awesome to show them though," he thought. "We could talk about it like we used to do after a great Games session."

His cooling sweat shook him out of his reverie. The butterfly was in orbit around him. "I guess I'll go home now," he said to himself, and started down. He dismounted from the portico with a regular jump (his head still a little sore from his previous flip) and walked home.

"Will the Sergeant banging on the door wake me up?" he wondered.

Radius awakened from sleep mode as Dirk walked in the door.

"Success?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Dirk, "But a butterfly followed me home. Maybe you were right and this wasn't such a good idea." Dirk took off his backpack, checked the leg for damage (it seemed fine) and continued his thought. "But you need this leg, and I'm glad I acquired it for you. Ready for installation?"

"Yes," said Radius.

"Is it ok if I take a shower first?" Dirk asked, as he wished he could go for a swim instead. "A few laps would clear my mind after that little adventure," he thought.

"Sure said Radius. "No rush."

"Thanks."

After his shower Dirk installed the leg. It powered up and optested sat.

"That was easy," said Dirk with a little laugh.

Radius walked around the house, continuing the optest. "Simple installation, but an unnecessarily complicated process. Thank you."

"Your welcome. Now I need to rack out and sleep. I may have an unpleasantly busy day tomorrow."

Radius nodded.

# (32) Day 22 0730 The Sergeant's Late Response

The Sergeant was unhappy and in trouble as a result of the AI. The AI (artificial intelligence) monitoring the surveillance system (or more accurately, that constituted the surveillance system) since there was no threat to human safety, failed to awaken him after detecting the break in. His unpleasant awakening by the Director's indignant fury when she'd read the nightly summary provided more than sufficient motivation for him to change the AI alert settings to ensure he'd be made aware of any future activity.

Usually the summary said "NSTR" which meant "Nothing significant to report". This morning, on the other hand, a three page summary of the alarm, resulting area survey and suspect chase made for exciting reading as the Sergeant rushed to the Director's office. The video of Dirk, (it was obviously the delivery kid) was playing on the big screen, and stills taken from the video at one minute intervals ran around the edge of the summary page.

"What in the hell is this!" the Director screamed. "He broke into the 'private' storage. You assured me that wouldn't happen!"

The Director had retained a limited set of functional spare parts, in case of actual need on her part, or by Company officials who might arrive with robots (and too high a rank and commensurate potential influence on her superiors) to risk giving broken parts. Faulty parts filled the normal storage facility, enabling her to sell the functional spares to lunar customers. Dirk had happened across a part with only a bad circuit board, but most of the stored spares were merely empty shells - the heavy components - the servos, hydraulic systems, joints, magnets, etc. had never traveled past the Lagrange Points.

The Sergeant shrugged. "A full investigation to determine how he did it is required. The fence is intact according to the initial indications."

"What did he take?" snapped the Director.

"A robot leg. It must be for his work colleague. I hadn't heard about any damage. Maybe it only happened yesterday. Come to think of it, when the kid delivered the drone the robot wasn't with him as it usually is. I didn't think much of it at the time, since the package was so light, but maybe the robot was already injured then."

The Director glowered at him.

"Give me some options to regain control of this situation!" she demanded.

The Sergeant had engaged in preliminary brainstorming on response courses of action as he'd rushed over and so only had to think for a moment before explaining his idea to the Director.

"Make it so," she said. "That will slow the little thief down."

# (33) Day 22 0900 Arrested

The narrow gap between crime, investigation, prosecution and punishment on Mars resulted in the Sergeant knocking on Dirk's door at 0900. His dad appeared almost immediately afterwards, having received a text notifying him of his son's imminent arrest.

"What's going on!" he asked.

"Your son is being arrested and put on administrative trial today for various infractions. Since he is a minor, you may accompany him. However, since it is an administrative procedure no lawyers are permitted," the Sergeant said.

Mr. K had many questions, but held his tongue when he saw Radius walking around. "I must discuss this with Dirk," he thought, "But it is too risky to do with the Sergeant here."

The Company had lawyers he could use, even though Sergeant had said they would not be allowed. However, legal help in the next few hours was beyond the Company's capabilities. There was not even time for advice via a remote presence drone.

As Dirk pulled on his jacket the Sergeant said, "Let's go, Dirk".

Dirk walked out the door, with an intense look at his dad, trying to communicate everything that had happened overnight.

"Dirk looks tired," his dad thought. "How did he get that leg?"

As Radius walked out the door, Mr. K reached out, pulling him back inside the doorway. The Sergeant and Dirk continued down the street, not looking back.

"Radius, what happened?" Mr. K asked anxiously.

"He acquired a new, functional leg for me. He linked it to my maintenance account, so it should be paid for properly, but I fear that the fact that the lockers were in a secured section of the facility has complicated the situation."

"Why didn't you guys fix the leg yesterday afternoon immediately upon returning? " Mr. K asked.

"We tried two spares available in the parts lockers, and both were inadequate. That is when Dirk decided to try the parts in the secured section of the facility. I don't know how he entered."

Mr. K stood quietly in the doorway. "Ok, thanks Radius. If you don't mind, I think it might be better that you not appear in the courtroom. If he is accused of stealing your leg, the leg present in the courtroom will not help his case."

"Very well," said Radius. "I'll stay here.

"Thanks, Radius," said Mr. K.

# (34) Day 22 1030 Judicial Proceedings

"This is not a trial," the Director said, contentedly ensconced on her dais and relishing the opportunity to exert her authority in front of an audience. The Sergeant brought in chairs from the other offices for potential spectators, and the proceedings streamed on the City network so anyone interested could watch. Dirk stood in the middle of the floor, the Sergeant on his left and his dad on his right.

"Dirk Kamehameha, front and center," the Director said. Dirk approached the dais, where he had often delivered the protocol packages, and stood silently. The Sergeant motioned Mr. K to step over to the side of the room nearest the door. From his new position Mr. K was perpendicular to Dirk and could watch the expressions pass across his face as the proceedings unfolded.

"This is an administrative session to determine punishment for acts within the purview of the civil obedience statue of the Martian colony of which I am the primary Government representative. No rules of evidence apply, or are necessary in this case, and legal counsel is neither permitted nor required. There is no appeal to punishment meted out by this court."

Dirk had never heard any of this before. As far as he knew there had not been any crime on Mars – sweat suddenly ran down the side of his face. "This does not sound good for me," Dirk thought. Out of the corner of his eye he looked at his dad, viewing something on his tablet. "Is he checking the Martian code?" Dirk wondered.

"Although evidence is not required, I am a firm believer in transparency and honesty in government. Therefore, Sergeant, play the video evidence associated with the charges against the young Mr. Kamehameha."

"Yes Ma'am," said the Sergeant.

On the screen a video using only the ambient light (not the infrared option) of Dirk executing a tic-tac between two buildings appeared. The Sergeant froze the video and zoomed in on his face. His face, illuminated by a streetlight, while the rest of him remained in shadow stood out perfectly.

"Based on this evidence, you Dirk Kamehameha are charged with trespassing on the property of the community and disturbing the peace," the Director proclaimed. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Surprised that they hadn't mentioned Radius' leg or his trip along the pipeline Dirk stared back. The Director, interpreting his vacant stare and silence as a result of fear of her, smiled satisfactorily. He would remain quiet about the "other issues".

"Your lack of a statement is noted," she said. "I will now read the sentence."

The Sergeant came to attention.

The Director began her pontification. "No longer are you permitted to move at will over Government property ("It is really Company and individual's property" Dirk thought) like a tightrope walker. In order to tether you to the community and its norms you are hereby sentenced: you must wear, at all times you are outside your home, including while performing your duties at the Elevator Logistics Construction Station, weighted clothing sufficient to generate the equivalent of 40 Earth pounds, measured by load sensors placed in your shoes. This data is reviewable by the Sergeant with 24 hours notice. Compliance will also be verified through unannounced, in person inspections."

Dirk, a smile sneaking onto his lips, looked over quickly at his dad. His dad maintained a stern expression, and shook his slightly to the left, as if saying 'No!' and made the hand sign he had used with him as a kid that meant 'quiet' (palm down, with a quick flex of the fingers). Dirk wiped the smile from his face.

He looked at the Director and realized she was waiting for him to say something, but he didn't know what to say. "Thank you" didn't seem right but...

"How am I supposed to gain the weight?" he asked.

"What?" asked the Director, annoyed.

"Um, if I have to increase my mass such that I wear the equivalent of 40 additional Earth pounds, how am I supposed to do that? Do I have to carry a brick or something?"

The Director smiled. "It is not the role of this administrative procedure to solve all of your problems for you. Why should we expend resources, Government resources mind you, to solve your particular challenge? Your failure to obey the rules of the community does not generate a claim on the community to make your life easier by providing you with compliance mechanisms."

Dirk stood there in response, the ludicrousness of the situation, which had developed very quickly, outpacing his ability to process it. "Why didn't they accuse me of stealing the leg?" he asked himself. "The trespassing charge doesn't make any sense – none of it does."

He looked over to his dad, but saw only the 'quiet sign' again in response. "Good advice, I guess," Dirk thought.

The Director looked at the Sergeant. "Anything further Sergeant?" she asked.

"No ma'am," he responded.

"Very well. Dirk, you have five working days to comply with the punishment. Report when you are ready for sensor installation to the Sergeant at his office. Dismissed!"

Dirk looked over at his dad, who motioned for him to follow. His dad walked out of the office, and kept going out of City Hall, not waiting for Dirk. Dirk followed at a normal pace, figuring his dad must have a reason for refusing to speak. He'd wait until he arrived home.

"I wonder if Tom watched?" Dirk thought. "I'm glad they didn't mention him."

# (35) Day 22 1200 After the Trial

As he approached the house Dirk thought, "Why didn't Dad stop to talk to me? Is he that mad? He didn't seem angry at the trial."

Radius and his dad were talking. "I've optested the leg across its full operational range. The leg itself seems fully functional, but my locomotive abilities remain suboptimal," Dirk overheard Radius saying.

"Interesting," said his dad. "Could it be a class problem with the replacement legs?"

"I don't think so," said Radius. "The first two legs were clearly deficient – the first missing the control circuitry, and the second the servos and joints – only the external shell remained. I could tell immediately by its lightness, stripped of the valuable parts, like a vehicle on Earth after being stolen. This leg is unaltered."

His dad turned to him. "That was either a bit of luck or an indication that we have a bigger problem than we thought," he said.

"What's going on?" Dirk asked.

"I've been talking to Radius to try to figure that out. Now Radius, has the leg functionality improved with use?"

"Yes," said Radius. "Initially it took multiple milliseconds for the leg to respond to inputs. Now it occurs almost within the appropriate parameters."

"So you are learning to use it, getting used to it?" Mr. K asked.

Radius paused. "Yes, that describes the process."

"That makes sense. You are an incredibly complex, not just complicated, individual. Even though it stands to reason that a leg built to the same specifications as your original leg, and designed to work with your body, would work as intended automatically, it also stands to reason that a 'getting acquainted' period is necessary before the two complex systems can work together seamlessly."

"The same thing happens with humans who get prosthetic limbs. It takes some time for the nerves to learn the pathways," said Dirk.

"I disagree," said Radius. "You are applying biological metaphors to a non-biological system. I think it must result from a design flaw or mistakes in the software. Since this leg was built I have had software updates, and incompatibilities in the many trillions of lines of code governing my activity are causing the difficulty."

"That's possible," agreed Mr. K, "But I offer that since your leg functionality is improving, without code rewriting, the learning metaphor offers a valid explanation. But we can leave that to the side for now."

"Yeah," said Dirk to Radius. "I'm glad it's working.

"Why didn't they throw the book at me for taking the leg? They didn't mention it at all," he asked his dad.

"Yes, what is the situation now?" asked Radius.

"Oh yes, I forgot to tell you – your limp distracted me," Mr. K said. "Dirk is being punished for trespassing through the town at night."

"Not for theft?" Radius asked, his voice rising in pitch at the end, as if in surprise.

Mr. K worried, said, "I would have been happier if it had been for theft."

"What?" Dirk exclaimed. "You'd be happy if I were in jail!"

"No, no, no," his dad said soothingly. "I mean that you have happened upon something that is clearly illegal, is going on outside of the Company's knowledge and approval, and seems to implicate the Director and the Sergeant in some sort of scheme that I cannot right now figure out."

Dirk paused. "Ok, so if they had accused me of theft, (which it really wasn't since we paid for the leg and the Company ultimately owns the parts anyway)" he said, nodding reassuringly at Radius, "that would have been straightforward. We could have contacted the Company lawyers and they would have straightened everything out, and we'd report the problems with the spare parts."

"Yes," his dad agreed. "But now it seems that you have stumbled upon something bigger, and I'm not sure how to proceed. I'll have to think about it for a while."

"But you didn't tell Radius the funny part," said Dirk, relaxing a little now that his dad had taken the load of figuring out what to do.

"You tell him," his dad said with a smile.

"My punishment is to be weighed down so I can't parkour. I have to wear the equivalent of an additional 40 Earth pounds," Dirk said with a laugh.

Radius had to think for a minute. "But your dad already has you wearing 80 earth pounds, though I notice you are not wearing it now."

"Yeah, I didn't want to look bulky for the trial and now I'm really glad I didn't wear it," Dirk responded. "But what are we going to do about compliance? Do I go in for my weigh-in in what I usually wear?"

"It is not only the weigh-in – they can review your weight based on the sensors in your shoes, anytime with the 24 hours notice. So I think the most prudent course of action is to wear your normal weighted clothing. Though actually I was thinking you should add some weight anyway."

"Add weight!" Dirk said. "Why? You are punishing me now too?" His anger ramped up quickly.

"Was it a punishment when I started having you wear the weights?"

"No," admitted Dirk.

"You are wearing the weights to preserve your strength. I wear weighted clothing too. I'm convinced that the gravity here on Mars in insufficient for human health – without the weights, and the stress it puts on your body, I think you'll develop various diseases. Not only osteoporosis, but others because the gravity is too low to give your body the signals for which it was designed. In other words, our bodies don't get the feedback here required for proper functioning. Of course, I could be wrong, and we may adapt fine, but based on Lunar experiences, I think I'm right. On the Moon they medicate and electro-stimulate as necessary to counter the damage. We are doing similar things on Mars, but I would rather you, since you are still growing, get more 'natural' feedback, even if it's artificially imposed. Your weighted clothing now is still only about 30% of the necessary load. You've had time to acclimate to Mars now, so I think we should bump it up 50%. I have some extremely dense material left over from some of the cosmic ray shielding for the mainframes that I've added into another vest as well as a set of suspenders. The density provides weight without bulkiness."

Dirk groaned – but he admitted the utility.

"But what will we say when I weigh way over the required weight?"

His dad thought for a moment. "We'll say that I agree with the punishment, and added the weight to punish you even more."

"You could say you are afraid he will get hurt, and that is why you added more weight – so he cannot engage in activities that would present high risk to his safety," Radius added.

Mr. K laughed. "Nicely put Radius. You are thinking like an Earth parent now."

"Or," Dirk said, "Like someone who recently broke a leg."

Radius smiled and Dirk and his Dad laughed. "Ok Dirk, you should get to work."

"But Dad, there are not any deliveries scheduled for today."

"Though there are no deliveries scheduled, the maintenance requirements still demand our attention," said Radius.

Dirk hung his head. "I thought going on trial was enough for one day. And I'm tired from the 'trespassing' last night."

"I don't think there would be any harm in knocking off a little early then, but you do need to get down there. I'll make you some breakfast while you get changed," his dad said.

Dirk headed to his bedroom.

# (36) Day 22 1530 Punishment Delivered

The day passed uneventfully. Radius' limp disappeared by the time they reached the Crane Farm, and he let Dirk rack out and take a nap while did he most of the preventative maintenance. Radius could do most of the work himself. Indeed, since he didn't have to look up procedures in the technical manuals or review the checklists for performing the various checks he was faster than Dirk. However, some checks he couldn't perform. Most often this was due to the need for removal and reinstallation of a part that was fastened such a way that an awkward position from which to exert sufficient torque to move the fastener was required. For example, a check on the radar servo required reaching up and turning a nut on a bolt in a small gap underneath the main housing. Radius, because of the way he was made, couldn't exert sufficient torque through the wrench with his army fully extended. Radius could have turned it easily with his finger strength alone, however, the nut was partially enclosed by the housing and he couldn't fit his hand in far enough to get sufficient purchase on the nut. Dirk had teased Radius about it initially, but now he performed the various tasks without comment, grateful all the maintenance was not his task alone.

"I wonder how long it will take the Company to design and build everything so that it is all Robot maintainable and repairable," he said to Radius, feeling much better after his 'nooner' nap.

"I'm surprised it hasn't happened already," Radius replied.

"I bet they thought they did," Dirk said, "Especially for the extra planetary stuff, but I guess they didn't redesign all the elevator parts for robot construction. They probably used the existing Earth elevator plans and parts."

Mr. K walked into the workshop.

"Hey guys," he said. "I brought you a present, Dirk."

"Oh great," Dirk said. "Thanks."

"You are so welcome," his dad said with exaggerated cheerfulness. "Here are the suspenders, weighted belt, gaiters for your boots, and a couple of extra clips for your vest."

Dirk put on his new weight gear. "Ugh. This feels like 200 pounds!"

"You'll have to get used to it," his dad said. "It's good for you!"

"Thanks for putting this together. But why did you walk down here with it? I could have picked it up from you tonight," Dirk said.

"Two reasons," his dad responded. "One, in case of a surprise inspection I don't want to give the Sergeant any excuse to punish you further. Who knows, maybe they are hoping to hammer you for a lack of compliance. Two, I need to work out. I even made myself a set of the suspenders." He opened his coat, showing the suspenders across his chest. "I've atrophied more than I'd like to admit. I was too easy on myself, and didn't start wearing the weighted gear until immediately before you arrived."

"I didn't know your set was just as heavy!" Dirk said surprised.

"Yes, like I said, it is a health issue. What, you thought I was really doing it to pick on you? I'd be picking on you if I didn't give you the tools you require to grow up healthy and strong. Anyway, I've got to get back to work and you should too."

"Ok Dad," Dirk said. "Thanks."

# (37) Day 22 1730 Dirk makes a Swimming Proposal

"Hey Dad, in the early days of the terraforming, didn't they use asteroids?" Dirk asked his dad as they sat down to an early dinner, after Dirk had taken a power nap.

"Yes, Dirk, they sure did – boatloads, so to speak. There are three asteroid belts, other than the Main belt (or the 'missing planet zone') between Mars and Jupiter. The _Amor_ belt is between Earth and Mars, and hence of most interest to us here. Most early asteroids were C – type from the _Amor_ belt. The _Aten_ belt orbits completely between Earth and Venus. It was discovered in the 1970s. The _Apollo_ belt also passes between Earth and Venus, but its orbit also extends to the orbit of Mars, so it had some utility for Martian purposes. There were about 10,000 near Earth asteroids, with about 2000 potentially useful from a harvesting perspective. The ones richest in water were actually harvested for fuel purposes, so the ones that met two criteria were sent to the Martian surface – One, they passed close to Mars, so the energy costs of shifting their orbits to impact Mars was manageable. Two, they had water, but not so much that they were worth more as fuel sources than as Martian terraforming resources."

"But Dad, isn't getting water to Mars more important than anything else?" asked Dirk.

His dad laughed. "Of course, to you and me here on Mars, but more happens off Terra than Mars related activity. Even 100 years ago there was a huge amount of space based work (satellite repair, zero-g fabrication facility construction, asteroid mining, lunar colonization, space elevator loading and unlading, etc.) all of which required fuel. Today the Company produces most of its fuel from ice found on asteroids. A fleet of 6 ships is dedicated to _Amor_ belt ice mining activity to serve the fuel needs of inner solar system Company activity."

"In addition," his dad continued, "Not everyone was convinced of the utility of colonizing Mars, especially with the colonization of the Moon proceeding quickly and providing many of the services Mars colonization would supposedly make possible. Mars competed, and still does, with the Moon for colonization resources, and therefore Mars didn't automatically have a claim on the asteroids richest in ice. And remember, Mars is not actually inadequately supplied with water – the water is simply not optimally distributed from a human colonization point of view. Most of the water is locked up in the polar ice caps and the permafrost."

"And we use the waste heat from the Power Plant to melt that permafrost in the Swamp by the greenhouses," said Dirk.

"Right," his dad responded. "So the C-types with water, but not too much water, were crashed into Mars, mostly in the Northern hemisphere lowlands. The C-type were especially desirable because while they contain water, they also posses other gases in frozen form, like carbon dioxide, and additional minerals. The off gassing of these materials and minerals as they plummeted down helped thicken the thin Martian atmosphere. For about 20 years in the middle of the last century there was an asteroid impact for terraforming purposes every 2 weeks. With a good telescope it was possible to discern the comas of the asteroids, looking like comets, as they bounced through the upper levels of the Martian atmosphere. I can still remember, after hiking with my Troop, peering through the telescope at Palomar Mountain at a series of 15 asteroids descending toward Mars to commemorate 25 years of terraforming activity. The weekend consisted of the final hike required for the hiking merit badge, a 20 miler, and while most of the guys stayed asleep, exhausted after the long day, my best friend Jack and I woke up for our chance at the telescope."

"It must have been worth it if you still remember it now," Dirk said. He'd never heard the story before, and it made him realize that his dad was actually quite old.

His dad paused, and smiled. "It sure was! Even then I knew I wanted to do something in space, but I never dreamed that I'd actually be on Mars. The lunar colonies were built up by that time, and it seemed that there was really no reason to go to Mars, as far as most people were concerned. It was only a few visionaries, and of course the brilliant men at the Company, who maintained Mars as a priority."

"We don't know if those Company guys were brilliant yet or not. This might not work." Dirk said.

His dad looked at him with surprise. "Not work! It's working now! We are the lead scouts for the settling of an entire planet! The Lunar colonists are forced to live underground for protection from cosmic rays and meteorite impacts. Without an atmosphere Luna will never be completely self-sustaining. Of course, with the space elevator and the activity density in near Earth orbit that does not constitute a fatal flaw - they can persist as the control point at the top of the gravity well supported by Earth."

His dad was becoming impassioned. "But Mars! Mars! This is a planet, a planet coming alive. We'll be able to live and grow here for generations, and if we are even remotely intelligent we'll be able to do it without 80% of the friction that acts as such a drag on productivity back on Earth."

"What do you mean, 'without 80% of the friction'? Because of the lower gravity and lower atmospheric density?" Dirk asked.

His dad smiled. "No, in this case I'm actually using the idea of friction metaphorically, the way Clausewitz did in his discussion of war. Clausewitz used the concept of friction as a way to articulate the difficulties that continuously emerge in attempting to prosecute military operations. Communications go awry, orders are misunderstood, troops fail to appear in the right place at the appointed time, equipment breaks, people disagree, and so on. This friction affects not only war, but all human activities. We will not be able to eliminate it, but our focus on the narrow, technological task we have set for ourselves, and the small number of people involved, means that we can reduce the friction to a great degree, certainly more than anything that happens on Earth. As our population grows, and we start to deal with questions of organizing our human society and the conflicts that emerge among the various interests in that society, the friction will increase. However, that will not be for many years yet, I hope. Everyone here has an interest in seeing this colony succeed."

"What do you mean," Dirk asked. "I thought we were working for the Company. The Company has an interest in seeing it succeed, but we as individuals don't really."

"Oh yes we do. Who do you think the Company is?" his dad inquired.

"Staff hired on Earth and shareholders among pension funds and mutual funds and stuff and then people on Earth, Luna and on the various ships harvesting asteroids," Dirk replied.

"Yes, that is correct, but who do you know among that number?"

Dirk thought a moment. "Um, the staff is everyone here, so I know most of them."

"Exactly, and you are a part of that."

"But we are simply salaried employees."

His dad laughed. "Not at all. We are owners! Not only are we shareholders in the Company, that is we own stocks, but we also own part of Mars. I own my house, your house (which you are working to earn yourself) as well as parcels of land both near the City and throughout the planet. I put about 70% of our life savings into Mars – some of it is back on Earth as a hedge against Maritain disaster."

Dirk was shocked. He had thought only as far as his paycheck, which actually didn't seem all that big, but he figured he'd worry about that later. He was at first excited about the prospect of earning almost as much as he would have from sponsorships on Earth – about 2 million, not bad for someone starting out in the lower professional leagues. It was a decent wage on Earth, but his excitement had died when he realized there was nothing to buy on Mars, and no experiences to pay for - there was no one to pay. Therefore, he hadn't thought much about money since arriving.

His dad continued. "Everyone involved in the colony has a personal ownership stake in it. As the experience of both Jamestown in 1607 and Plymouth colonies showed, without personal property colonies fail – people will not work sufficiently hard absent an adequate incentive, and property is the best incentive we've found."

The conversation now gave Dirk the opportunity to suggest an idea he'd been working on for two months to increase the fun quotient of Martian life – a place to swim.

"That's all great, and good to know, but I asked because I was thinking that we could land a water heavy asteroid in the volcano, Tharis Minutus, southeast of the city. It is far enough away that the impact would not threaten the City, and yet close enough that it would serve as a backup reservoir."

Dirk paused. "In the future we could even use the water there for irrigation – and swimming," he finished with a smile.

His dad thought about it for a moment, and then pulled up a map of the region. He stared intently at the display, noting the elevation of the volcano and its position relative to the City and Crane Farm.

"That is a great idea, Dirk," he said. "Right now we are entirely dependent on the built reservoir – if anything happens to that, we are out of luck. The City was intentionally built on rock, with very limited permafrost in the area. We didn't want the City to sink into the muck as the planet warmed. The permafrost sectors near the city, predominantly to the east, are used primarily for methane production. The flamingo harvest is a positive externality of the methane mining activity. The water they gather is pumped into the storage tanks inside the Power Plant. When we exceed the storage capacity the water flows downhill into the constantly growing marsh, and what doesn't remain in the marsh flows down into the Valles Marineris."

Dirk smiled – his dad liked the idea.

"I've actually been thinking a lot about how to increase the anti-fragility of the City. We are sufficiently small now to be able to survive most major disasters, but as the City grows, as it will, we must to create a system of systems that will enable survival across the full range of potential threats. I'd considered building a reservoir but this is an even better idea. Nice work. Write this up. Do a point paper on it, with some drawings, and send it to me tonight."

Dirk groaned and anger flared– paper writing was among his least favorite activities. "So I'm being punished for having a good idea by you forcing me to write a paper about it!"

"Calm down, son," his dad said. "A paper is a way to communicate your ideas quickly and clearly to other people. You are going to have to share your ideas your entire life, and persuade others of their utility. Unless of course you want to keep working at the Crane Farm forever - until the Elevator makes it obsolete."

Dirk was still angry.

"Tell you what. You do the initial write up and the basic calculations on the delivery. You should be able to do that in five minutes – it is a special case of a delivery to the Crane Farm, with a geographic offset to the Tharis Minutus. I'll finish the formatting for you and give it a read over and send it on to Nordo at the NEO Mining division to see what he thinks."

Somewhat mollified, Dirk said, "Ok. Is tomorrow soon enough?"

"Sure, no rush," his dad said. "It is a great idea. Include your thoughts on how we'd get the water from Tharis Minutus to the City too. Are you thinking a canal or piping system?"

"I hadn't planned that far, but I'll think about it. I'm confident the floor of the crater, from the maps anyway, is higher in elevation than the City, so a gravity feed would work," he answered.

"Good thinking, Dirk. I'll see you tomorrow."

# (38) Day 23 1400 Dirk goes Hiking

Already past the rift where Radius had broken his leg and feeling good, in spite of wearing his extra weights, he returned the water bottle to his backpack. "I'm sure I won't even notice the weights in a week or so, but they are heavy now," he said to himself. He'd considered not wearing them, but figured he'd never get stronger if he took them off whenever he went on a long hike.

He looked over at the Three Sisters, the ancient volcanoes that ranged in a line southeast from Mount Olympus. "I haven't really explored much on Mars," he'd said to himself after work the day before. "I'm at the Crane Farm, playing video games, climbing with Tom and T2 or reading books. On Earth I'd go out every weekend, hiking, swimming, climbing or competing in something. Even weighted clothes won't keep me from becoming a slug if I never leave the house."

So he'd decided to go exploring to see what he could see of Tharis Minutus before it was turned into a giant swimming pool. He laughed to himself, surprised that his dad hadn't called him on the idea of creating a place to swim. "Maybe Dad wants to go for a swim too. The sweatsuits will function as dry suits (probably) so I should be able to swim for a few minutes at least before hypothermia sets in. But I won't wear the weights!" he said to himself. "I'm not that motivated!"

Striding across the open plain, lava flows here smoothed by 100 million years of Martian winds, Dirk said out loud, forgetting for a second that Radius wasn't with him, "It's good to be out here without the time pressure to get a package to the Director or threat of imminent death from a stay package."

Tharis Minutus made a nice target and the Three Sisters also looked intriguing. "Next trip I'll climb the peak of the middle one and from there perform a visual recon of the other two in preparation for perhaps a longer climb with Tom," Dirk thought.

He'd started later than he'd wanted to – he couldn't find his scout knife and had torn the house apart before it finally appeared. "I'm amazed I have enough stuff here to lose things," he said to himself. "I'll have to hurry to get to the Tharis Minutus, check out the caldera and be back to the Crane Farm before dark."

As he walked up the increasing slope, his thoughts turned to the day after he'd arrived. He and his dad had gone for a long walk. His dad said that walking was the best way to get to know a new area, and the only way to acquire a London cabdriver level of 'The Knowledge' of a place.

Looking over the landscape, he thought about that first "Introduction to Mars" conversation with his dad as he headed southeast of the city toward Tharis Minutus.

"The geology of Mars is no less complex than that of Earth, its sister planet, but a lot less active now," his dad had said.

"Exogeologists divide the geologic life of Mars into three main phases. The oldest is the Noachian. During that time the great Northern lowlands were formed. Next comes the Hesperian followed by the current era, the Amazonian. During the early part of this period the Three Sisters and Olympus Mons, all part of the Tharis Majoris, a massive plateau that is the highest area in elevation on Mars, formed. They are similar to the Hawaiian Islands, if the Hawaiian islands didn't start at the bottom of the ocean, but on the high plateaus of Tibet. The Three Sisters, (Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arisa Mons) were generated by a hot spot, like the Hawaiian Islands, which, as you know, includes the 7 main islands plus over 100 more heading out west toward Japan."

"As the plate moved over the hot spot, the volcanoes formed. The lava flows to the south and east of the City were the result of earlier volcanoes. Due to evidence of massive outlflows to the east, formed probably by the cataclysmic expulsion of underground aquifers, some exogeologists speculate they are hollow underneath."

"If there is so much volcanic activity in this area, why did you decide to put the City here? Wouldn't a less geologically active location prove safer?" Dirk had asked.

"That is good thinking," his dad had replied. "However, though there may be some residual volcanic activity (though we haven't sensed any) like the thermal vents of the Marianas trench, we located the City here for two reasons. One, it is on the equator, and thus optimal for Elevator placement. Two, it is the highest flat area on Mars, reducing the Elevator length. As you know, transport costs from Earth are the primary determinants of all, almost all, decisions on Mars."

Now he was commencing a climb on one of the products of that volcanism, the future Elevator anchor point within sight. Dirk reached the base of the volcano and considered his ascent. "Look like there is a good run, up and toward the right," Dirk said to himself, and started climbing.

It was getting late, so pausing from force of habit to imprint in his mind a potential descent, ensuring that he didn't climb to a point where he was unable to either ascend or descend, he continued on. Of course, if he did get stuck he could always take off his extra weights and jump to a more suitable location – he was working with only 30% of Earth gravity after all. However, he didn't want to rely on that sort of risky action. Planning his climbs based on his Earth training provided him with a built in margin of safety, a margin even more necessary considering he was climbing without a buddy, which is never smart.

He made the rim in good time and looked over.

"Magnificent!" he said. The sides were steep, but not un-climbable. Broken bubble like mounds covered the bottom, where lava had welled up, cooled, and collapsed. With the exception of a large opening on the southeastern side, as if lava had flowed back down through a sink drain, no large openings were visible.

Dirk checked his watch – 1530. Much later than he wanted, but he still had 3 hours of daylight left – time enough to explore before racing home. He mapped out a descent in his mind's eye before he started down.

"Should take about 30 minutes," he said to himself. "30 down, 30 to explore, a conservative 60 back up and an hour and a half to get home – no sweat."

Speaking of sweat, he was very thirsty after the climb, and drank the rest of his second extra bottle. This left him another liter and a half with which to get back – plenty.

Turning around so his back was to the crater, he lowered his left foot onto the first hold. He paused before sinking below the crater rim – he could see the City in the distance – it sure didn't look like much. The Power Plant, ship and greenhouses were visible, while the other building faded in the dusty haze. The 3D printing process used local sand as the aggregate, so the building blended in with their surrounding, like tents under camouflage netting back on Earth that they had used on a desert campout when he was a Life Scout.

Dirk continued down the crater rim, much steeper than the exterior slope, but still eminently climbable without requiring any special effort. "This slope is pretty nice," he said to himself as he looked back up, pleased to see multiple options for the return trip.

At the bottom of the caldera the surface was mostly black, with swirls and tiny little craters that looked like they had been made from millions of air bubbles popping. Gazing back up at the slope up to the rim, he visually retraced his steps, imprinting the route in his memory to accelerate the climb back out. "There are probably many egress paths," he thought to himself, "But I'll save exploring the alternatives for another time." Confident he could readily extricate himself from the caldera, he returned his attention to the new environment in which he found himself.

The caldera was approximately 100 yards in diameter, and 100 yards from the floor to the top of the rim. He wandered across, examining the different designs in the cooled lava. "This is all evidence of chaotic fluid dynamics interacting a million years ago." Dirk thought, "Actually, I have no idea how long ago this was molten – I'll have to ask Dad."

When he reached the other side of the caldera he paused from his surface examinations to look up at the sky. He could barely see Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons, over the southern edge of the crater. Deimos wasn't visible. "It seems brighter than it should," Dirk thought to himself. "Maybe it is an effect similar to that at the bottom of a well. I've heard you can see the stars when you look up if the well is deep enough."

However, as he looked at the sky a little longer he realized he was seriously mistaken – clouds were blotting out the light from the sun, making Phoebus appear relatively brighter. Clouds on Mars meant only one thing – dust storm.

The weather report had not indicated any large storms brewing. This must be one of the squalls generated on Mons Olympus. They usually flowed down past the Three Sisters before curving down into the northern lowlands. Such squalls were no big deal in the City. When the storm approached it was easy enough to stay inside and delay going home or to some other building to execute a task. The Martian activity pace was such that for most people, except for Power Plant guys like Tom, the greenhouse farmers and himself at the Crane Farm, a delay of an hour or so made little difference.

But he was out of range of the safety provided by the City structures, or the buildings at the Crane Farm. Although the frequency and speed of the squalls compared to terrestrial thunderstorms, they posed a much more serious threat to life, for two reasons. First, due to the scouring effect of the dust even a short storm could turn the lenses of goggles completely opaque with millions of scratches, and cut through clothing like a weedwacker. Second, the dust storms made it impossible to breathe, and even a storm of only 15 minutes would clog the filters on the emergency respirators so that they offered no better protection than putting one's head in a plastic bag.

"Find shelter right now!" Dirk said to himself, as he started walking quickly, (afraid to run lest he trip and break something on the uneven caldera floor) toward the other side of the crater where he thought he saw an area that might offer some concealment from the storm.

As he approached the southern end of the caldera the surface changed. It was as if he was walking across the tops of waves flowing from the northern wall of the caldera. Dirk climbed a slope about ten feet high and peered over the edge. "This looks promising," he thought quickly. The slope constituted one side of a little valley between the backside of the lava flow and the caldera wall. He scrambled down carefully – the mid afternoon sunlight had been reduced to the level of twilight immediately after sunset. Walking closer to the caldera wall, he peered intently for an outflow point that might have created a little cave in which he could set up his emergency shelter.

A roar like that of a garbage truck accelerating down the street where he lived on Earth first thing in the morning alerted him to the sandstorm's arrival before he felt anything. Phoebus was completely gone, and he rummaged through his backpack for his flashlight. "I should have organized this better!" he said to himself, frustrated. Out of practice, his gear wasn't set up for quick access as it was when on his frequent backpacking trips on Earth.

His hand found the flashlight and he scanned the area in front of him. He saw what appeared to be an alcove of sorts in the wall, and scurried toward it. "This is too shallow," he thought, disappointed. It was no deeper than a small closet. He pushed himself in, but as he turned around he felt an emptiness off to the right, and moved that way, shuffling his feet in case the emptiness he sensed was from a vertical - not horizontal - opening. He scooted along for about a body length and the space suddenly opened up. It was noticeably quieter, and he could barely feel the wind. The floor was covered with sand blown in, he figured, by storms over the years.

"This is about space the size of my living room," Dirk thought.

Returning his focus to the problem at hand, "Get into the emergency tent," Dirk said to himself. Though he was for the most part sheltered from the storm, the air was still filling with sand dust. He pulled on his respirator and unpacked his emergency shelter. It was designed mostly for thermal protection when caught out in the Martian winter, but would also provide protection against the dust. It wouldn't last long in a full sand storm, but in the shelter of the cave it would be fine. The shelter, a six foot long tube unfurled automatically when he released the straps holding it closed, due to the tensioning poles that gave it its shape. Opened it looked like a sarcophagus made out of nano-coated, insulated fabric. At one end it rose up, giving more room for the head, making it possible to read comfortably while inside.

Dirk did a quick scan and pushed the sand into a pile against a wall, creating a softer surface, and protecting (he hoped) the shelter from any sharp rocks on the floor. He put the shelter down, and unzipped the top half. Removing his boots, he put them underneath the foot of the shelter, against the wall, to prevent sand collection. He'd put them inside the shelter but wanted to reduce the amount of sand in there with him as much as possible. He brushed his clothes down with his hands, and took off his tunic and weighted clothing. After shaking his tunic hard he folded it to use as a pillow. Grabbing his last water bottle, he secured his backpack, lay down in the shelter and zipped himself in.

He lay there, listening to the storm, breathing through his respirator and looking at the inside of the shelter. It was a somewhat comforting sight, reminding him of sleeping inside similar mosquito net shelters while at summer camp.

"I should save my batteries," Dirk said to himself, and switched off the light.

The darkness was total – the muffled roar of the wind continued in the caldera, accentuating the relative quiet of the cave. "I'm sure glad I found this place," he said. "I hope the storm passes soon – I'm going to have to hustle to get back home before dark."

Climbing out of the freshly sanded caldera, especially in the twilight, did not appeal to him.

Dirk sat up slightly and drank more water – he was almost out.

"I'm glad I didn't bring Radius," Dirk thought, "Though I'd be happy to have someone to talk to, and he could send an emergency signal letting Dad know we are ok, there isn't enough room in the shelter for two, and the scouring would certainly not be good for him. He's had enough trouble recently."

Dirk lay there listening to the storm for a few minutes, but now that the excitement of the race for shelter was over became bored. Unzipping the shelter quickly, he grabbed the Book out of the backpack, zipped back in, and read for a while.

Upon finishing the second chapter he paused and listened carefully to the storm. "Doesn't sound like a squall passing through," he said to himself. "Back on Earth I'd access a satellite map and microclimate forecast, revealing exactly how long the storm will last. But no such luck here today."

"Maybe I should go out and check," he thought. But the idea of getting up, putting his boots back on and climbing back into the shelter if the storm continued, adding more sand in the shelter with each activity, was unattractive. "My ears will let me know when the storm passes."

He read a little more and set his alarm for 60 minutes. "I can take a nap and still make it back in time. No point sitting here waiting for the wind to stop. Nap ops," he said to himself, and placing the Book by his side closed his eyes for a rest.

# (39) Day 23 1700 Cave Awakening

"Beep beep beep beep." Dirk emerged from a dream about his final kayaking trip to complete the kayaking merit badge at summer camp a few months before his departure for Mars. He stared into the darkness for a moment before turning off the watch alarm. The storm had not abated. "So much for that weather report," he thought. If the storm was still blowing there was no way he could make it home before dark. "I'm stuck here for the night," he said, not especially bothered. "Dad will worry, but he knows I've the training necessary to survive."

The shelter in the cave was plenty warm – he needn't worry about freezing. He only had a protein bar to eat though, and was almost out of water. "I'll be dehydrated tomorrow, but at least I won't have to get up in the middle of the night to take a leak," he said to himself.

Tired from the hike, he drank a little of his remaining water and lay back down – "I'll eat if I wake up in the middle of the night hungry – otherwise it will make me thirsty," he thought. After shifting around in the shelter for a minute to get comfortable, he adjusted his tunic/pillow and slept.

Awakened by the silence, Dirk turned on his headlight and lay there staring at the shelter, stretching. Now that he wasn't so tired, the floor felt uncomfortable. He checked his watch – 0400. "Too early to head back." After unzipping the shelter, he collapsed it, and put both respirator and shelter in the backpack. "I'll have to change out those filters when I get home," he thought. He put on his boots and made his way out of the cave. Not even a slight breeze disturbed the evening – Phobos (not in fact, scary) flew by on its second of its daily orbits, but provided little illumination. The surface of the moon itself, composed of dark regolith, possesses an extremely low albedo, so it provides even less illumination than a waning Moon on Earth.

As Phobos disappeared behind the upper edge of the crater rim he went back inside the cave. He sat down next to his backpack and tried to decide if returning to sleep was a viable option. He sat there, feeling slightly cold. He checked the piezoelectric generator battery built into his trousers – the hike yesterday had it fully charged, and even after sleeping he was still at 70%. It would keep him warm enough, especially if he started moving. Making patterns with his flashlight on the walls and ceiling he considered his options. "One, I can get back in the shelter and read until I fall back asleep – but I fell asleep early yesterday, and don't think I'll fall asleep again – too uncomfortable when not exhausted. So two, I can sit here and read, or three, explore this cave."

He stood up – "Explore. I'd be stupid not to. That is what I'm here for."

Dirk accidentally drank the last of his water – he'd wanted to save some for the climb and hike back, but it felt so good to drink. As a result, he now had barely enough left in the canteen to make a minor sloshing sound when he shook it. "Oh well," he said to himself. "That is what comes from inadequate preparation. It won't be fatal, but I'll probably have a dehydration headache before I get home."

Grabbing his backpack he put the Book inside, not for the information in the Book but so he had a camera if he found something cool. The Book camera was much better than the one on his communicator. He had a better unitasker SLR camera, but wanting to travel lightly hadn't brought it. The laws of optics were such that glass lenses were still big and heavy, and although lots of people found the cameras included in their tablets and communicators sufficient, he still thought it worth it to carry around an SLR. When he was going out to take pictures, he'd bring all his lenses (a telephoto, wide angle and his 70-200). Even though the Orbiters had photographed every inch of the planet, there were still infinite new things to see, especially as the terraforming began to take hold. "I always regret not bringing the camera, but I guess I won't regret it as I'm climbing back up out of here," he said to himself.

Dirk shone the light toward the rear of the cave. It seemed to be in kind of an S shape – the entrance was at the top of the S. He'd slept at the middle curve – far enough in to gain some protection from the storm, but not so far that he ran the risk of losing his spatial awareness concerning the entrance to the cave. As he approached the next part of the S curve, the dim light from the entrance vanished, and with it, he desire to explore further.

Last night he'd been more afraid of the storm than the cave, but now that it was calm outside, his unease with spelunking emerged. The relative risk calculus had changed, leading him to reconsider his exploration decision.

"I can't head back yet, can I?" he thought. "Let's check the Book." He pulled up the stored Solrise/Solset tables with the twilight indicators for the equator. "A Sol is longer than an Earth day by 37 minutes, but at the equator the rapidity of sunrise and sunset, with short twilight periods, is the same. So at midsummer the Sol begins at about 0530, meaning I have an hour and a half to explore."

"I won't go too far though," he said to himself, his nervousness at the prospect of going deeper into the cave rising. During an event back on Earth he'd almost lost his way in a cave. The competition, in the western section of Virginia, near the border of West Virginia and North Carolina, included a run, a spelunking section, and finished with a rock climb. He'd been behind during the run – he wasn't an especially fast runner – and needed to make up some time through the cave. The path was marked with lights, but he also had lights on his helmet and forearms.

He'd run into the cave and proceeded forward into the darkness. He barely heard the guy in front of him up in the distance, but couldn't see his lights. The path was marked with reflective tape that stood out dramatically in the cave. However, the floor, rocky and uneven, forced him to stay focused on his feet, only checking the tape occasionally. As he figured out later, his mistake was to read the tape that was actually on the left hand side of the path as on the right – as a result, he'd gone off down a side tunnel which had quickly opened up into a large flat area. The problem was he only noticed his mistake after he was in the middle of the space, and thus there were no indications of which way would be most effective in enabling him to trace back his steps.

A scary couple of minutes passed as the realization he was lost sunk in. He was last, it seemed, since he hadn't heard anyone else behind him once he entered the cave complex. Standing silently, he looked around the empty darkness, attempting to discern some clue indicating his entry point. After what seemed like an hour, but was only a few minutes, he'd heard someone else puffing through the cave – the sound was enough to orient him and he rejoined the trail, following the racer in front of him and double checking each of the tapes to ensure he was not following someone who was himself lost.

The experience had had two effects. One, it gave him more confidence in caves, confidence that had served him well in later races. Two, it increased the caution with which he approached spelunking. This seems contradictory, but in fact the impulses generated by the experience were complimentary – he was confident in caves when he had the necessary gear and maintained his situational awareness. Lacking the gear, he didn't go, even if it was a quick dash to explore.

His stance toward spelunking reexamined, he started back. "I've two things against me here," he said to himself. "I don't have the gear and no one knows where I am – not good. Under here no technology could detect me, and the sandstorm eradicated all trace of my travel out to the cave. If I get lost no one will ever know."

However, as he reached the cave mouth he thought, "But there is nothing else to do really, so I'll go only a little ways. It probably doesn't go far."

Finally decided, he put on his backpack and headed further into the cave. It curved to the right, completing the S shape. After another curve to the left, the slope steepened. Dirk looked back, but saw only the single pathway along which he'd come – no confusing branches so far.

He continued down the corridor. The tunnel was predominately smooth. He paused often, examining the colors on the walls. "These must be created by the various minerals in the lava that produced this tube," he thought. He made the only sounds he heard. The rustle of his clothing, steps and breathing echoed softly. He checked his watch.

"Ten minutes. No way to tell how far I've gone, with all this stopping," he said.

The path sloped down gently and curved slightly to the right. Dirk walked around another curve, and tumbled awkwardly down, landing on his back, and dropping the flashlight in an effort to catch himself. The flashlight slowly rolled to a stop at the bottom of the slope. Dirk shifted his weight onto his left side to reduce the pain caused by a large rock poking his right hip.

Initially, a surprised "Ugh," was all Dirk could manage. He moved a few rocks out from underneath himself, sat more comfortably, and stared at the rock on the floor of the corridor the flashlight uselessly, but effectively, illuminated.

Unwilling to take another tumble, after catching his breath Dirk crab walked down the slope to the flashlight.

Dirk sat down and reached out for the light. "How far did I fall?" he asked himself, intending to quickly scan the slope behind him to determine how much trouble he was actually in. He grabbed the light and stopped, his gaze arrested by a strange pattern in the sand adjacent to the illuminated rock.

"It looks like someone had drawn a line with a stick in the sand, but that doesn't make sense," Dirk thought. He peered more closely. There was a line, interrupted by rocks occasionally, with little circle marks on either side. The line wiggled slightly from side to side. "Did rolling rocks from the wind make the marks?" Dirk asked himself, but that didn't seem likely.

"Snake," Dirk said to himself. "That is what it looks like, but I don't know what those dots are on the sides."

He sat staring for a few minutes, his precarious situation forgotten.

"I'm taking a picture of this, whatever it is."

Pulling the Book out of his backpack, not worried about its functionality, he swiped to the photo app. The Books were hardened, the screens made out of sapphire, the bodies a titanium alloy. Teenager induced compression had no effect.

Placing a few rocks together to make a platform, he balanced the light in order to illuminate one of the better-formed tracks. "I should put something in there for scale," he thought, after taking a few pictures, and pulled out the Book stylus. The stylus wasn't always necessary, but when wearing gloves in the cold it made navigating the Book much easier. He placed it carefully next to the track and took more pictures.

"I'll show these to Tom's wife," he thought. "An exobiologist, who has only dealt with searching for fossils on Mars thus far, she'll be excited to see something potentially living."

"Hold on," he said to himself. "Let's be realistic – she'll be able to debunk this as evidence of life. It's probably an artifact of wind from storms moving pebbles or something."

Dirk took a deep breath, his excitement tempered by the realization several challenges remained ahead of him before he could take the time necessary to think about what he had found. He put the stylus away in the Book case and shone the light up the slope.

"Not bad," he said. It was only about a 10-foot drop, at about a 50-degree angle. He could have walked down it if it had not surprised him. Securing the Book inside, he zipped his backpack and started back up on his hands and knees.

"No sense in taking any additional risks – and there is no one here to laugh at me anyway," he said to himself.

He reached the mouth of the cave complex without further incident. Too excited to sit still now, he said to himself "I'll use the flashlight to get as far as I can, and then wait for dawn if necessary."

Dirk surveyed the area. Twilight illuminated the sky in the East above the rim, but complete darkness dominated the crater. "I came in on the other side, so I'll slowly work my way over there. It should be light enough to climb by the time I reach the northern end."

40 minutes later, as Dirk reached the opposite wall the light was in fact sufficient to start his climb. Dirk had forced himself to focus on his foot placement, and now with the climb ahead of him he still didn't have the spare bandwidth to really think about what he'd seen. He concentrated on recalling the path he'd taken down, confident that it would get him back up, down the other side and on his way home.

# (40) Day 24 0930 Dirk returns home with news and is disappointed

Exhausted, Dirk walked in the door to his house and saw his dad asleep in his favorite chair.

"Oh, yeah," Dirk said to himself. "Dad was probably more than a little concerned." Dirk considered waking him up, but decided he could probably use the rest. He put his boots in front of the door, so there was no way his dad wouldn't notice he had returned, and started to get ready to take a shower and go to sleep himself. "I'm exhausted, but so wound up I doubt I'll fall asleep easily," he thought.

"Welcome home, son," his dad said.

Dirk turned. "Dad! I'm sorry I was gone all night – the sandstorm stranded me."

"I figured as much," his dad said. "I was a little nervous, because I don't recall you getting any _Sandstorm Survival on Mars_ merit badges."

"The principles are universal – be prepared. I actually hunkered down in a cave in the Tharis Minutus crater in my shelter, and it wasn't too bad," Dirk said.

"And you won't believe what I saw," he continued. "But first, I'm – almost – dying of thirst."

He went into the kitchen and filled his water bottle.

"Sip it for a minute," his dad said. "Otherwise you might puke it up again, depending upon how dehydrated you are."

Dirk returned to the kitchen and spit the first few mouthfuls of water back out – his mouth felt sandy. Returning to the living room, Dirk sipped half the bottle, (struggling to prevent himself from guzzling it as he would have after a tough competition), put it down on the table and unpacked the Book from his backpack.

"Check this out Dad," he said. "The last few pictures."

His dad opened the photo app and flipped to the most recent photo. He looked carefully at it for a minute, checking every few seconds to see that Dirk was rehydrating at an appropriate pace.

As he drank Dirk stared intently at his dad, watching for a change in his expression from one of inquisition to amazed surprise – it didn't happen.

"How are you feeling, son? Is the water hitting your bloodstream yet?"

"Yes, I can feel my cells rehydrating now," Dirk said. "But..." He motioned at the Book with his water bottle and raised his eyebrows.

"Your finger must have slipped when you were taking the photo – you only imaged rocks and sand," his dad said, handing him the Book.

"What! Hold on a second. Let me show you."

Dirk took flipped through the last few photos. "No, this is exactly what I wanted to show you." However, as he looked at them he could understand his dad's lack of reaction. Because he knew what to look for, he discerned the trails and the little dots on either side, but he saw why they hadn't attracted his dad's attention.

Dirk didn't know what to do. He had been so excited, and then tired, then excited, then exhausted and dehydrated and glad to be home.

"In the stress of the storm and its aftermath had I seen something that wasn't there, like reading faces in light sockets or in the early photos of the 'Great Face of Mars'?" he wondered.

He didn't want to sound like an idiot in front of his dad, but on the other hand was, or had been until recently, positive that he had found evidence of life on Mars.

"Oh." He said. "It looked cooler when I was there, but you're right, this really isn't anything special."

His dad gave him a quick hug with one arm. "Even without any great pictures, I'm glad to have you back safe and sound. Do you have any arrivals scheduled today?"

"No, so unless there is an emergency I don't have to go to the Crane Farm."

"Good. Hit the showers, get some rest, and I'll be back over around lunchtime to make us some chow. I'm awake now, so I'll get some work done but I'll probably knock off after lunch and sleep – neither one of us rested sufficiently last night."

"Yeah, but you were much more comfortable than I was," Dirk said.

"True," his dad responded, "But I paid for my comfort with worry while you were compensated for your discomfort by adventure."

Dirk finished the water bottle, and tolerated another hug from his dad as he left. "I'll think about the pictures and if it is even worth the effort to show them to Mandy later," he said to himself as he headed for the shower. "I'm too brain dead from fatigue to figure it out now."

# (41) Day 24 1130 Government Visit and Donation

Dirk, awakened by banging on his front door heard, "Open up, it's the Sergeant," over the intercom.

Groggily, still in his underwear, Dirk walked to the door and opened it.

"Put some clothes on," the Sergeant said brusquely. "You have to come down to the station for a health assessment."

Still half asleep, Dirk's first thought was to call his dad. This didn't make any sense.

"Why?" he said.

"You were lost overnight, which should have been reported, and we must check for infection," he said.

"All right, just a minute," Dirk said, and shut the door. He called his dad as he got dressed – no answer.

As the Sergeant stood outside the door he thought back to the hurried conference with the Director that morning. The Sergeant had seen Dirk's dad walking to his office early, and when talking to one of his friends from the bar had learned that Mr. K had been in so early because he'd been waiting for Dirk to return from a hike. Dirk had not made it back until that morning. The news, when he shared it conversationally with the Director after their morning synchronization meeting (which given the lack of activity for either of them had become merely a shared cup of coffee – well, the Sergeant delivering the Director's first workplace cup of coffee), stimulated ideas in both of their minds.

The Sergeant had immediately said, "I wonder if he wore the weight gear? Probably not, and if not, we can get him for violating the conditions of his 'sentence'."

The Director waved a hand dismissively. "Yes, but that is small potatoes – better we use it as an excuse to acquire additional blood. My contacts back home inform me that there already exists a market for 'pure' blood products. Ultra-rich aficionados of the international dance scene, primarily in Lagos, Singapore, and Sao Paulo, but spreading to hubs like Ibiza and Toronto, are undergoing cleanses prior to drugging up for multi-day happenings. The cleanse supposedly re-sensitizes the sensory 'palate' like ginger between bites of sushi. It therefore makes the experience generated by the various drugs subsequently ingested purer."

'But why do they need that?" the Sergeant asked.

"Recreational drugs are designed to generate specific sensory experiences. Last year's fashionable drugs used individual experiences stored in the mind as raw material. However, since very few, even among the ultra-rich, have experiences as vibrant as those simulated by the writers of virtual reality immersions, the demand for those types of drugs didn't last. However, this season, people desire new tactile experiences, which virtual reality still does not supply at the most refined levels. Therefore, a small, but extremely lucrative market for these tactile sensation drugs has emerged. What's interesting to my partners is the fact that purification, cleaning out all the other drugs in the system prior to using the tactile enhancing substances, has become an integral part of the experience."

"That doesn't sound like a very big group of people," the Sergeant said, unimpressed by the news.

The Director snorted. "We don't need large numbers of customers – a few customers that pay a large amount of money to us will meet our 'business' needs. Our blood products constitute the perfect 'purification' treatment."

She sipped her coffee and stared at her desk for a few minutes. The Sergeant gulped the last of his, watching the news from yesterday as it was displayed on the wall in front of the room. He'd never admit it, but he was coming to appreciate being on Mars more and more, and watching the news added to his sense of satisfaction. "There are so many hassles back on Earth," he thought. "If this blood business works out, I'll dramatically elevate my standard of living and attain levels of satisfaction here previously beyond my dreams."

The Director interrupted his thoughts as the pictures of the latest terrestrial riots impacted his retinas – "And we can check and make sure he wore his weight – if not we'll institute additional punishment."

The Sergeant blinked at her and turned to leave.

And now he stood outside Dirk's door.

Dirk returned in five minutes. "Weights on?" Sergeant asked.

"Yes," Dirk said, pointing to his suspenders.

"Good," the Sergeant said, disappointed.

They walked quickly to the City Hall – Dirk was surprised that his dad didn't meet them there. Maybe he had gone to sleep and so missed his call. Dirk called him again, and sent a text – no response.

The Sergeant took him directly into his office. "Give me your arm. Unzip the suit so I can get a vein."

"Why?" asked Dirk. "I already had my annual physical."

"You may have been infected by some local agent while sleeping overnight in the wild. We cannot risk you infecting the rest of the City."

Dirk immediately responded with "But Mars is dead! There is nothing living here but us and the organisms we've imported or developed to enhance the biosphere." Of course, he was not so sure that was true, but the Sergeants office was neither the time nor place to say it.

After checking his communicator (no response from dad) he pulled the suit down enough to expose his right arm median antecubital veins.

The Sergeant awkwardly put the tourniquet around Dirk's upper arm, swabbed the vein area at the elbow, inserted the blood collection set vacuum tube and began to fill sample vials.

When the Sergeant started on the second vial, Dirk asked "Why are you taking so much? A drop is enough for an infection sample." (He'd learned that in health class. On Earth even a hair would do.)

"We have to send samples to different labs, and to account for spoilage during transport back to Earth," the Sergeant said, starting on the third vial, pleased with his quick thinking.

That didn't make any sense to Dirk, and he called his dad again – no response. Six vials lay on the desk next to the Sergeant, and Dirk was starting to feel woozy.

Removing the blood collection set the Sergeant said, "And another thing - no more recreational exploration – you do your job – only your job. Go home now."

Dirk wasn't sure he could. However, not wanting to stay longer, he pulled up his suit and walked slowly out, his hand against the wall as he staggered down the passageway.

"Radius," he thought to himself. "I'll call Radius." He stopped around a corner from City Hall, out of view of the cameras at the main entrance doors, and called Radius.

Radius answered immediately. "Hello."

"Hey Radius, I'm at City Hall. Can you come give me a hand?" Dirk said.

"On my way," said Radius. "I'll be there in three minutes."

Dirk put his communicator back into his pocket, and half leaning against the exterior wall, continued around to the side of the building, out of sight of anyone leaving or entering City Hall. He sank to the ground, his back against the wall and waited for Radius.

# (42) Day 24 1230 Director outlines the Production Plan

The Sergeant walked into the Director's office. "30 ounces," he said.

The Director punched the number into an app she'd written for the 'business'. "That will provide about 90 samples to potential distributors. Sufficient for now," she said.

The Sergeant paused. His experience extracting the blood had caused a question he'd been pondering to raise itself to the surface. "Director, I'm not sure how this project scales," he said hesitantly.

"Good question," she said briskly. "I was concerned about the same issue. We simply cannot produce sufficient quantities to make the business viable. Fortunately, I found a solution that both enables us to scale and develop a brand. Instead of providing blood replacement directly, our product will serve as an input for personalized synthetic blood supplement production. Right now the blood sources for synthetic blood production are all universalized – they have been optimized for performing the function of blood, but there are no differentiators – everyone has access to the same blood base from which the individual blood products are made. Of course, for people with more money than sense, this is unattractive. What we are doing is adding the potential to brand the blood substrate itself, and provide a differentiator in the blood industry. In other words, we are bringing fashion into the blood market and thus creating new niche markets in a homogenized, commoditized industry."

"But is our blood actually better?" the Sergeant asked.

"How should I know?" the Director snapped. "But it doesn't matter – we are not selling blood, we are selling a fashion based differentiator. As long as people believe it is better and pay for it that is all that matters. By using our blood to create a synthetic batch which they then use to 'cleanse' their systems before ingesting the latest and greatest new drug, we become an indispensible ingredient in the drug experience of a small segment of the population with massive disposable income – we are in effect transforming blood into a luxury product."

"And with any luck we can expand into the organic health market," added the Sergeant.

"Yeah, possibly," said the Director, realizing it was actually a brilliant idea, but since she hadn't thought of it herself, acting unenthusiastic. "So our current low supply is not a major problem. What is a potential problem is if our friend Dirk dies before we can get this going – it depends on his young blood. Once established we can probably substitute other blood from Mars – baby's blood would be fantastic!"

"Oh yeah, we could charge a premium for that," the Sergeant smiled.

# (43) Day 25 1830 Yakisoba and Mushubi

Dirk slept the rest of the day and through most of the next night – his all nighter plus giving blood wiped him out completely. His dad had awakened him at dinner time.

"Dad," Dirk had said, "I don't see why they needed blood from me."

His dad, with an effort, kept himself calm. "You are right, Dirk, they shouldn't have done that. I was asleep and didn't hear your call/text – I had the phone on silent. I'm sorry I wasn't there – I feel terrible about it."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I know, but I should have been there. I've made a formal complaint to the Company. This was an abuse of power, a violation of your rights."

"It wasn't that big a deal," Dirk said, hoping to avoid a hassle.

"It was a huge deal, but you don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. This is part of a broader offensive on the part of the Director to illegitimately expand her power. Fortunately, we are not without friends back on Earth. But, here, eat this, get your strength back, and leave it to me. Though if they summon you to City Hall again tell them you won't go until I'm with you. Stay here until I arrive. Send Radius to get me."

"Ok, Dad," Dirk said. He had not felt hungry, but now that the yakisoba and mushubi were in front of him he realized he was ravenous. Dirk ate quickly, drank almost half a gallon of reconstituted orange juice, and went back to sleep. Surprisingly, after drinking so much, his bladder didn't awaken him until 0630 – losing a liter a blood has that effect.

# (44) Day 26 1400 Dirk shows Mandy the pictures

Dirk knocked softly on the door to Tom's house, the Book in his hand. Quiet entrances were the rule, since he never knew when T2 might be napping. T2 seemed to nap a lot.

After a minute Mandy opened the door.

"Hi Dirk!" she said in a low voice. "Come on in."

Dirk closed the airlock door behind him. Mandy nodded her head in the direction of the couch where Tom and T2 were napping. T2 was sleeping on top of his dad. Dirk had to stifle a laugh when he realized that they were both drooling.

Mandy rolled her eyes and said, "Yep, those are my boys. Come into the kitchen. What's up? Were you looking for a climbing contest?"

Dirk sat down at the kitchen table. "Actually, I'm here to see you," he said.

"Great!" said Mandy. "What can I do for you?"

Dirk paused. "Um, I took a picture of something when I was out at Tharsis Minutus and I'd like to you take a look at it."

"Ok, what's it of?" Mandy asked.

"If you don't mind, I don't want to say so that I avoid prejudicing your opinion one way or another," Dirk said.

"Sure. Do you want something to eat first?"

"No, thanks," said Dirk. "But I would like some water, if that is ok." He still felt a little dehydrated, or maybe thinking about the cave recalled the thirst he'd experienced then.

"Have all you want," Mandy said. He'd been there enough to know his way around the kitchen.

Dirk sat down again with the water and unlocked the Book. "Here are the pictures. I took a few."

He slid the Book across the table to her. She picked it up and looked closely for a minute before starting to pinch and flick to zoom in and out. Mandy looked up at Dirk through her hair as she pored over the images, and almost said something before shaking her head and returning to the image examination.

"Which one do you think is the best?" she asked, pushing the Book back over to Dirk. He flipped through quickly, selecting the second to last.

"This one. I used the flash." He had a feeling she knew what he wanted her to see, but she wasn't ready to explicitly acknowledge the possibility that had occupied the forefront of his mind for the past day – well, when he wasn't dying of thirst, having his blood stolen or passing out from exhaustion.

Mandy pushed the Book back across the table to him and sat back in her chair. "I think I see what you wanted to show me. It looks organic in origin. My first thought was a snake, but the little dots on the sides look like footprints, so maybe it is a lizard sort of creature."

Dirk had to fight to keep a smile from breaking out on his face. He didn't want to show how excited he was.

"However," she said, sensing his excitement, "I can't say for sure from those pictures. That is why I asked you which one you thought was the best. I'd like to, but the stories of misidentification because people saw what they wanted to see are legion, and I'm sure you don't want me to be mistaken either."

Disappointed, Dirk asked, "What should we do now?"

Mandy thought for a moment. "If you don't also have a video of our little Martian buddy standing up and saying 'Hello!' then additional pictures, with something to provide precise scale, are required. I've actually thought a lot about this."

She stood up. "I have some cameras and flashes you can take. More importantly than the cameras, I included graduated rulers you can place against the tracks so I can derive scale data and do locomotion modeling to get a better idea of whether or not the tracings (we can't call them tracks yet) are the result of animal movement or some coincidence arising out of a rock rolling around. Humans tend to see what we want to see, as you know and demonstrated when you didn't tell me you had taken pictures of tracks – smart."

Dirk smiled – it took a little of the sting out of the disappointment caused by her inability to see without doubt what he'd found.

"When can you go back?" Mandy asked. "But first, before you answer, have you shown anyone else?"

"I showed my Dad, but he didn't notice anything about them. He had been up all night..."

"Why?" Mandy interrupted.

"A sandstorm forced me to spend the night in a cave at Tharsis Minutus. That is where I took the pictures."

"Fascinating! So why was he up all night?"

"Waiting for me to get home," Dirk explained.

"Oh, of course! I'm glad T2 isn't old enough to wander around by himself yet," Mandy said.

"When can you go back then?" she asked.

Dirk thought a moment. "The Sergeant said non-work related excursions were forbidden due to safety considerations. I haven't talked to my Dad about it yet, but I think he will disagree. On the other hand, I don't think he'll want me wandering around by myself again anytime soon."

"I can go with you!" Mandy said. "That solves everything. I'm trained in sample collection and analysis - I didn't get my doctorate in exobiology for nothing after all."

Dirk hesitated. "Um, it was not an easy climb to get up there, into the caldera actually..." He didn't want to offend her, but wasn't sure she could do it.

Mandy laughed. "My Mom status doesn't entail I can't climb."

"Yeah," said a voice from the living room – "She's a better climber than I am," Tom said. T2 sat on his dad's chest, looking hungry. Tom brought him into the kitchen and sat at the table. Mandy put some cereal in a bowl. T2 grabbed pieces with his little paw and mushed them into his mouth, smiling at Dirk.

"What have you two been discussing?" Tom asked.

Mandy looked at Dirk and raised her eyebrows interrogatively. Dirk nodded "Yes."

"Dirk may have made the find of the century. He took some pictures during his overnight adventure of what looks like tracks from some living organism."

"I've got to see this!" Tom said excitedly. Dirk handed him the Book and scrolled to the best picture. T2, like his dad, looked intently at the image.

"Hummmm. I think I see what you are talking about, but I'm not sure," Tom said.

"You're right, and that is the problem. It is not Dirk's fault, but it simply isn't definitive evidence. Better imagery is essential," Mandy said.

Tom stood up, clearly excited - T2 under his arm he began pacing around the kitchen. "This could be huge, but we must be very careful and be sure of ourselves, well, actually Mandy requires definitive evidence before I think we share even our suspicions with anyone else. What do you think Dirk?"

Dirk thought a moment while he took a long drink of water. "I think you're right – I wouldn't want to overreact to a pebble caught in a cave bound dust devil."

"We'll have to think about the composition of the next survey team," Tom said, "With T2 and all."

Mandy nodded, not entirely agreeing but not wanting to get into the nitty gritty of the argument at the moment.

"In any case," she said, "I can show Dirk how to set up the cameras, flashes and scale so that when we do get a chance to go we are ready to collect evidence immediately."

"Sounds good," said Tom. "Are you ready to serve as a Martian wee beastie model?" he asked T2.

T2 wiggled happily.

"He is a real Martian after all," said Dirk. "He was born here, right?"

"Yes sir!" said Tom. "We had the first Martian baby – or thought we did." He gave T2 a big hug. "The originals may be running around that cave of yours!"

# (45) Day 27 0925 Fuel Transfer and a Muncher

The Book lay on the floor of the garage next to Dirk's head, a schematic of the fuel system displayed on its screen as he was elbow deep in the guts of the Crane that landed the day before. The day of its landing had been especially calm – no wind at the surface (the troposphere) the jet stream in the mesosphere was especially slow, and the exosphere was minimally turbulent. This added up to a prize of sorts as far as Dirk was concerned.

"Radius, could you hand me that socket set please," Dirk said.

"Certainly," said Radius, walking over to the workbench, grabbing the set and taking it over to Dirk while simultaneously examining internally the same schematic Dirk was reading on the Book.

"What are you doing Dirk?" Radius asked. "The functionality of that Crane no longer matters – it has served its purpose."

"Hold on," Dirk said. "I can't do this and talk at the same time – I lack your super parallel processors."

After a few minutes, Dirk inched out from under the Crane, picked up the Book, and stretched, doing some good mornings, trunk twists and air squats.

"I'm glad the hard part is done. The rest should be easy." Radius watched as Dirk pushed the Crane he was working on next to a Crane he had almost completely dismantled, removing the rocket engines and control system components, leaving only the fuel system. On the opposite side of the dismantled Crane, Dirk rolled a Crane that had arrived earlier in the week.

"Ok, now attach the fuel lines..." Dirk said more to himself than Radius as he took the inlet line from the pump on the center Crane and attached it to the line issuing from the fuel system of the recently arrived Crane. He attached the pump outlet line to the intake of the third Crane's fuel system.

"You are refueling the used Crane!" Radius exclaimed.

Dirk gave him a big smile. "Indeed I am. I figured these things are basically junk now, but all of them, to a greater or lesser degree, have fuel in them. They always fill the tanks, even though it is expensive, so that the Cranes can navigate through the atmosphere. They try to avoid windy days, but two reasons make the extra fuel necessary. First, the weather satellite's coverage is not that great, (as I well know having been stranded overnight by a sandstorm). Second, even though it is ten times less massive than Earth, it is still a big dynamic planet and the reserve fuel may be required to avoid a crash onto the City. As a result, almost all the Cranes contain fuel in the tanks when they get to us. Even though no single Crane has enough fuel to go very far, if I collect the fuel from several Cranes and load it into one, I'll have Cranes that I can use to do other things."

"Like drive around having fun," Radius said.

"Precisely!" said Dirk.

"Hey, Dirk! Hey, Radius."

"Sounds like Tom," said Dirk.

"It is," said Radius.

Dirk ran out of the garage and waved at Tom who was walking toward the Control Tower. "Tom! We're over here."

Tom jogged over. "Hey, I'm glad I found you guys. You want to help me turn a Muncher around?"

Dirk looked at Radius. Radius shrugged.

"Sure," Dirk said, "What's a Muncher?"

"I'll explain as we walk – very quickly. Grab some water and let's go."

Dirk went back to the garage, grabbed his backpack with the water and ran to catch up to Tom and Radius who were already striding back toward the City.

After a few minutes, Tom veered left off the path. "We'll cut across country to intercept the Muncher," said Tom.

"And Munchers are..." asked Dirk.

"Munchers are a nickname for the Martian Surface Carbonite Recycler/Aearators. Your Grandfather, I believe, actually designed them. They are the primary soil developers on the planet. In a way, they are the core processors at the heart of the terraforming project."

Dirk was surprised. He'd known his grandfather was an engineer, but didn't know he had done anything with terraforming. "So they are mechanical earthworms?" Dirk said.

Tom laughed. "Yeah, earthworms that eat through solid rock and through you if they get a chance."

"Why haven't I heard of these before?" Dirk asked.

"They were landed here about 70 years ago (they unrolled like rolly pollies, those crustacean like bugs) and began their work. The Munchers (it didn't make sense to call Martian terraformers 'Earthworms') did the work that on Earth is done by tectonic movement. Mars is tectonically inert, so it is unable to recycle the carbon dioxide and other gases that were precipitated by the weather into carbonate rock. As a result, the Martian atmosphere gradually became less and less hospitable to life, at least as we know it, and from looking around, as Mars might have known it too. On Earth the tectonic motion of the Earth's crust recycles gases caught in the rock, keeping the system moving."

"So earthquakes are the Earth crewing and exhaling," Dirk said.

"Yeah that is one way to look at it. And violently burping," Tom agreed. "But Mars is tectonically static, as far as we know, so it needed a little help."

Dirk noticed a dust cloud up ahead to the west of the City. "Is that the Muncher?" he asked Tom.

"Good eye! Yes that is it."

"Why is it here, and why are we chasing after it?" Dirk asked.

"It's not supposed to be here," Tom said. "They were dropped off in the Northern hemisphere, each group in a large crater. The idea was that they would be able to get to the nitrogen and water bearing soil more readily if they had a head start provided by an earlier meteoric impact. They were placed in the Northern hemisphere lowlands so the City, located on the equatorial highland, would be safe from them."

Dirk still didn't understand, but held his questions for moment while he followed Tom who had broken into a jog on an intercept course, not directly toward, the Muncher.

Tom continued: "The Munchers pulverize and mix the rock with a superfine water mist in order to moisten and aerate the soil. This complete, the Munchers add the 'secret sauce'. As they munch through the rock they periodically release lichen spores from compressed air powered bladders. Although they are now less efficient, since they are mostly out of water, there is enough water in the atmosphere now to enable the spores to grow. The spores eat methane and secrete oxygen, nitrogen and trace amounts of argon. It is a result of their efforts that we can breath as well as we can. Even 50 years ago we would have had to wear respirators."

"So they are the reason for the 'carpet'?" Dirk asked.

"Yes," Tom answered, "They spread the spores and started the lichen growing. The 'carpet' produced is now self sustaining on a planetary level. If all goes as planned, this lichen will eventually cause its own extinction – when the ratio of carbon dioxide gets to below 20% they will be unable to metabolize the methane, water and carbon dioxide into useful nutrients. But what is bad news for them will be good news for us, because it will mean that the atmosphere is functionally similar to Earth."

Dirk could discern the Muncher through the dust cloud by now. It did look like an earthworm, albeit one with a huge mouth in front. It appeared to be eating the ground, each bite causing it to move forward a bit in a hunching motion. It only disturbed the soil a little bit, it seemed to Dirk – hardly worth the effort."

"It isn't having much of an effect, is it?" he said to Tom.

"No, not in this area. It is not designed to operate here. We are on a high plateau, with very little water and very little loose topsoil. This was intentional – if we were in the lowlands we'd be up to our knees in a watery muck. Mars was covered with what we'd call permafrost on Earth, like in Siberia and northern Alaska. Thanks to the Munchers and asteroid and comet harvesting, we've been able to increase the surface temperature leading to melting of the permafrost. It still freezes during the winter on much of the planet, but the area in which it remains liquid, and thus more useful for biologics, grows all the time."

"How does the Muncher work?" asked Dirk.

"It is a product of earthworm bioemulation resulting in a mechanical combination of hydraulics and fuel cells. The hydraulics provide the crushing power of the jaws and a fuel cell absorbs about 40% of methane and water vapor released by the crunching and uses it for fuel. They were designed to work in groups, following each other's trails with a simple eye at the top of the forward jaw. Even though each bite is very small on its own, cumulatively they can dig significant trenches. In some areas of the Northern hemisphere they have become so deep as to create the canals Mars was once famous for, though now they are filled with the lichen."

"So what are we doing here?" Dirk asked.

"Preventing this puppy from eating the City!" Tom said.

"How are we going to do that?"

"We have to push it to turn it around." Tom stopped. He analyzed the Muncher as it approached their position.

"They were designed to be inexpensive, easy to produce, and requiring no maintenance. Therefore, they don't have a guidance system. Once they unrolled upon arrival they started munching away. Whatever direction they pointed when they opened up is the direction they went," Tom explained.

"What happened if they hit a wall or went over a cliff?" Dirk asked.

"If they hit a slope too steep to climb or a crater wall they either eat away at it or bounce against it until they eventually turn enough to go parallel to the wall. Sometimes they will bounce off and carry on – other times they will get stuck, and eat themselves into a hole."

"Then how do they pose a danger to the City?" Dirk inquired.

"Even though they were never supposed to reach the City, and we are thousands of miles away – uphill!" Tom explained, "they are so effectively engineered that every once in a while, doing their random walk, they get themselves into a position that poses a threat to the City. They send out a very weak Wi-Fi signal, and once they get within the City's WiMAX network range an alert is generated. I'm then notified and deal with it."

"How many times has this happened?" Dirk asked.

"This is only the third time, and I'm glad I have you here to help me. These things are tricky to turn, especially 180 degrees. The other two took me about an hour each to get retargeted – I was sweating like a pig when I was done, and it was winter! Moving them is like trying to push a moving sled up a hill. Oh, yeah, and a sled that has the potential to crush your limbs to a pulp."

"It's getting close," Dirk said.

Tom took a deep breath. "Let's get him! We'll both push on the starboard quarter, shifting his head to the west. I'll count 'One, two, three.' As we push, you count 'One, two, three' and then we walk past his tail and revaluate. I think with two of us it won't take long to get him turned 180 degrees. Our goal is to send him back down his own path."

Dirk took a drink of water. "Ready when you are," he said.

Tom paused for a drink of his own. "Ok, let's do it."

Radius interrupted. "What should I do?" asked Radius.

"Radius my friend, you are here to help carry the injured – hopefully that won't happen."

"Roger," said Radius.

"So Radius if you would please get at least ten yards away – we might push him in your direction inadvertently. Tell us when we are 45 degrees off from his original track."

"Ok," Radius said, and walked away.

"Now, Dirk, this might take us a little bit of practice to get right. Sometimes these guys skid more than expected. Of course, I've only done it a couple of times, so I really don't have a great handle on wrangling these puppies. Keep your head on a swivel and be ready to move. If he is coming right at you jump onto his back – that is safer than attempting to run and slipping."

"Jumping on his back doesn't sound too safe either," Dirk replied.

Tom laughed, "Yeah, I guess not. Let's push this guy and send him back to the lowlands to make some more air for us."

They walked up to the Muncher's right side, two-thirds down his length, Dirk closest to the tip of his tail. Tom gave him a nod and said, "One, two, three!"

They began pushing, and Dirk forgot for a second to count. "One two three!" he yelled and then walked away from the Muncher down the line defined by his tail.

After ten yards Tom stopped and turned. "Looks pretty good - ten degrees of turn. Do you want to push longer this time?"

Dirk considered a moment. It had been exactly as Tom said, like pushing a sled during a competition, the weight skidding in front. If he leaned into it at a steeper angle, and drove with his legs, he could easily move it further. "Sure," said Dirk.

"In order to ensure that we don't push him away from us so quickly that we slip, let's add 2 to the count. Go to "Five' this time," Tom said.

"Sounds good," said Dirk after taking a sip of water.

"One, two, three." Tom yelled once they were in position.

As soon as his hands hit the Muncher Dirk started his count. "One, two, three, four, five" and they walked aft of the Muncher and turned around.

"Nice," said Tom, after rinsing his mouth out and spitting. "I ate a bunch of dust that time. I think we are at about 45 degrees now. Only 135 degrees to go. I think 'Five' was good. Let's do that again."

Dirk rinsed, spit, and clapped his hands – "Ready!"

They approached the Muncher and repeated the process two more times.

"We're almost there," said Tom. "I think two will do it this time. Radius, how do we look?"

"I concur," said Radius. "Unless you guys are tired, and thus don't push as hard, two will suffice to push the Muncher back onto his original track."

"Why not leave him here?" Dirk asked. "He is slightly to the West of his track now, heading away from the City."

"That is a good idea, but I want to take advantage of the track following capability in order to increase our certainity that he won't get shifted by a big rock or a crater and spin back around toward the City. If his path led him here he should be able to follow it back where he came from."

"One, two, three" counted Tom.

"One, two!" said Dirk pushing hard, and walked aft.

"What do you think Radius?" Dirk yelled.

"You are appropriately aligned," said Radius. "He's heading along his original track."

"Nice work, and thanks," said Tom. "That took us 15 minutes of pushing – much better than the hour it took me by myself."

"Glad I could help," Dirk said. "Great workout – my legs are burning!"

"Mine too," said Tom. "Let's go home. Thanks for the backup Radius."

"Your welcome," Radius said, still watching the Muncher to determine if final adjustments were required – it seemed on a satisfactory course so he turned and followed the guys back to the City.

Dirk was a little nervous about getting in trouble for having left the City and gone somewhere other than the Crane Farm. However, after showering at home and going back over to Tom's for lunch he stopped worrying. "The Sergeant would have slammed me by now," he thought.

# (46) Day 28 0800 Surveying a Justification for returning to the Cave

The Muncher incident had been a distraction. After breakfast the next morning, as he walked to the Crane Farm, Dirk couldn't stop thinking about getting back to Tharsis Minutus, this time with Mandy's camera equipment.

The question is, "How can I get out there without raising suspicion?" He was no longer allowed to explore on his own (according to the Sergeant) and though his authority in this matter was questionable Dirk wanted to avoid trouble.

Radius unexpectedly provided the solution at the Crane Farm. "Dirk, one of my tasks is to extend the survey grid in preparation for construction following Elevator completion. Given the lack of deliveries in the schedule, I propose we embark on this task."

Dirk was at first dismissive. "Yeah, but Radius, the Elevator is not even under construction yet – why do it now when we don't have to?"

"It is a matter of good practice," Radius replied. "When one is given a task, that task should be completed as expeditiously as possible – the future is uncertain, and what appears to us now as 'plenty of time' can be eaten up by unforeseen challenges."

Dirk had to admit the correctness of Radius' position. "Ok, Radius, you're right. What do we have to do?"

"The task requires that we establish property line benchmarks relative to the geodetic survey points on the equator and the line of zero latitude established by the point of the bow of the ship that became the initial City Power Plant," Radius explained.

"But Radius, what do we actually have to do?" Dirk asked.

Radius paused for a moment, thinking about how best to explain the task. "We have to drive the monuments into the ground based on measurements from the original planet wide benchmarks system. This will extend the human scale surveying system, useful for delimiting property lines as the City expands. It is an artificial overlay on top of the broader planet wide system. Additional build out of the human habitation on Mars depends upon this vital preliminary step."

"That's great Radius, but I still don't understand what we have to do?" Dirk said, exasperated. He had been hoping to spend the day figuring out how to get back to Tharsis Minutus, not working on some project with a due date that was probably over a year away, at the very least.

"Establish subsidiary benchmarks – we have to make monuments, consisting of special nails embedded in the ground. These monuments constitute the benchmarks which can then be used to establish property lines and lay out construction sites and structures on those sites."

The answer to his problem appeared to Dirk in a flash of insight – surveying was the perfect cover for getting him, and the photo equipment, out to Tharsis Minutus. His attitude suddenly shifted.

"Great idea, Radius! Let's do it today. How do we start?"

Radius was pleased – he'd thought he'd have to sell the idea a little harder. When the logic of a situation did not compel Dirk's agreement immediately Radius always struggled to persuade.

"The equipment, the laser levels, theodolites, surveying tripods, sledge and monument markers are at the Crane Farm. We'll print a few other items, like face shields," Radius explained.

"I'll be ready in ten minutes," Dirk said.

"Ok," said Radius, who was always ready. "I'll meet you at the Crane Farm. I'll print out the eye and face protection. I printed the sledge yesterday."

After Radius left Dirk gathered together Mandy's camera equipment. This included two tripods, two cameras, and two external flashes. As he was putting on his weight bearing clothes he paused and looked at the pile of gear. "This stuff will weigh me down enough – I'll skip the extra weight – if we get caught I think carrying the surveying equipment will provide a sufficient excuse to avoid trouble," he said to himself.

Radius removed the two pieces of the face shield from the printer as Dirk arrived. "Dirk, please assemble this," Radius asked. Dirk put Mandy's camera equipment down next to the surveying gear and took the pieces from Radius. Radius's fingers were extremely sensitive, but were biased toward strength. As a result, it was sometimes hard for Radius, and Robots in general unless specifically designed to do so, to assemble general purpose printed equipment. They tended to push too hard, breaking, for example, the connecting pieces between the head strap and the protective face shield itself whereas humans, like Dirk, were better at the minute wiggle movements necessary to push the face shield onto the head strap tabs.

"We have all of our equipment now. Are you ready?" asked Radius.

"Ready," said Dirk. "Let's start to the south, toward Tharsis Minutus."

"Very well," said Radius. "We will begin by finding the first Geodetic benchmark on the equator, which will be easy because it is only a 1000 meters from here. The circumference of Mars is 21,344 at the equator, and they installed nine benchmarks as part of the City foundation, four on each side of the prime Meriden. Our control tower is offset from the prime meridian by 600 meters. The Elevator will be centered on 0 LatitudeMars and 0 LongitudeMars. So another 400 meters East will bring us to the first equatorial benchmark. We will use that benchmark, and the tower, to establish our first monument marking the first southern Benchmark. The City has several benchmarks already, but they are all North of the equator."

The walk, even weighed down with the various tripods and surveying equipment, didn't take long. Radius quickly set up the first tripod directly over the nail marking the benchmark. "Each nail is serialized – it is essential that we put the correct nail in the correct place. The nails are meant to be read by and thus provide inputs to the WiMAX network as it expands. As the WiMAX network grows, it will be possible to see each of these points, and use them as a reference in the City's and eventually the planet's, common operational picture. If we place a nail in the wrong location, it will create a cascading series of errors."

"Then I'm glad you're the boss of this operation," Dirk said with a smile. This sort of detailed accuracy was not his forte.

Radius finished with the tripod, turned on the laser sight, and began walking further East. "I'll set up the tripod on the next benchmark, and activate the lasers. Then you'll take the laser rod and prism out to determine the location of the benchmark. I'll direct you – all you have to do is listen and keep the prism pointed in my direction. We'll get a bearing on the second benchmark. You'll remain in place, and I'll come back to this first benchmark and get a second reading so that we have two lines of bearing. Then you'll mark what you think is the location, and I'll dead reckon out to you and check it. Once we concur on the placement, we'll drive the marker and move on to the next one, which will give us three lines of bearing, and we'll repeat the process."

Dirk's heart sank, but he didn't show it – this was going to take days and days of work. On the bright side, it was going to get him closer to Tharsis Minutus with the gear he required.

After an hour and half they had two new benchmarks placed, and Dirk was ready for a break. Radius was not, so Dirk had to work through two more benchmark placements before he was able to convince Radius to pause in the project.

"Hey Radius, we are fairly close to Tharsis Minutus – Mandy wanted me to take some interior pictures of the crater. You can keep working..."

"But Dirk," Radius interrupted. "You are the prism holder."

"You can dead reckon and check, or dead reckon to the new ones which will give me a better idea of where to start, so we can dial in the precise location faster."

"Ok," Radius, said pleased that they'd accomplished the bulk of the task (achieving his goal for the first day) without complaint out of Dirk. Time to triple check the work was welcome. "Do you require my assistance with the project?"

"Nope," Dirk said. He didn't say it, but was thinking that he didn't want to risk Radius getting hurt on another climb. Dirk adjusted Mandy's tripods on his back for climbing and secured the backpack containing the camera gear. "I'll come find you at the next benchmark point. I'll hold the prism, you can do the final checks, and we'll mark that puppy."

"Roger," said Radius.

"I'll be back in 3 hours," Dirk said. That gave him 15 minutes to get to Tharsis Minutus, 30 minutes to climb up, 30 minutes to climb down, 30 minutes to set up for the pictures and an hour to get back to meet up with Radius.

# (47) Day 28 1538 Return to Tharsis Minutus

Dirk checked his watch when he reached the rim of the crater – "20 minutes. Nice! Ahead of schedule." He looked down and found Radius, looking like a toy as he checked the monument locations. Dirk took a drink and headed down into the crater.

He beat his estimated time to get the bottom as well. "It always seems faster when you know the way," he said to himself. He hustled over to the cave entrance and slowly went inside, hoping he'd hear a scurry and flurry of little creatures fleeing from his approach.

No such luck. He put his headlamp on and continued into the cave. After passing the smoothed out area where he'd spent the night of the storm he paused and peered intently at the ground.

No tracks revealed themselves. He didn't really think they would, but their presence would have simplified his task. Now that he was in the cave again he began to feel a little hesitant – his excitement at discovering the 'tracks' had overcome his memories of the fear and general unpleasantness associated with cave exploration.

"But I have a job to do," he said to himself, and headed further back into the cave. After a minute however he stopped again and took off his backpack.

The fear was beginning to overtake him – he hadn't expected it, but there it was. Rested, and without a storm to make the outside environment more hostile than the inside, the amygdala, his 'lizard brain' as he liked to refer to it, was doing its best to overwhelm the intentions of his higher _homo sapiens_ gray matter. He was surprised by the strength of the fear – it was not as though he was swimming through the cave, hoping to surface in a open space of air before his lungs exploded – he was walking in to take a few pictures.

He wanted a security blanket, and was glad there was no one else there to see him break it out – though of course if there were someone else there that would provide the positive peer pressure necessary to enable him to put up a brave front, in spite of his fear, which is of course the definition of courage.

The 'blanket' emerged from the bottom of the backpack. In this case it was much more useful than an actual blanket.

He tied a bowline around the shoulder straps of the backpack with the paracord, serving as his 'security blanket' or, it occurred to him now, Ariadne's thread Theseus used in the Cretan labyrinth. He'd last used the paracord as a clothesline during a beach campout with his troop. "This cord has come a long way," he thought, "From drying a bathing suit and swim shirt at Waiamalo to now feeding through my hands in a Martian cave."

Leaving the main backpack on the ground, he awkwardly picked up the bag containing the camera gear in one hand, stuck the tripods under his arm, and then with the other hand fed out the paracord as he walked deeper into the cave. It wasn't much, but the cord in his hand as he walked forward into the illumination of his headlamp, silence and darkness surrounding him, was enough to tamp down the fear and enable him to carry out his mission.

Sideways, he carefully walked down the slope where he'd fallen before. It was really nothing – he'd only fallen due to the unexpected nature of the slope. He looked quickly at the ground, but nothing jumped out at him. "Since the marks here had proven inconclusive, no point in tarrying there – the better hunting must rest deeper within the cave system," he thought.

The cave angled steadily down. Occasionally he came to a complete stop to figure out a safe path down the steeper of the slopes.

Originally a little less 500 meters long (since he'd cut off pieces for various lanyards and knot practice with some of the Webelos who'd come on the campout) the bundle of cord grew light in his hand. "It's more than halfway gone," Dirk thought.

"I'll go to the end and revaluate." He checked his watch. The chronograph read 46 minutes – still ahead of schedule, but setting up the camera equipment might take longer than expected. Mandy had talked him through it, and showed him one of the flashes, but he hadn't assembled the entire package.

Dirk walked for about another thirty seconds, making several turns as the tunnel narrowed – and stopped. At first he couldn't figure out why, and then he realized what had halted his forward movement. He'd felt a change in the atmosphere. "Did I feel a breeze?" he said, as he craned his head upward. The light illuminated nothing – no longer was the ceiling only a few feet above him.

"Whoa." He was almost out of paracord. "End of the cord, and I'll stop," he promised himself.

The slope angled down steeply – he had to walk carefully. It flattened out again, and he felt two different things simultaneously. The cognitive dissonance the feelings caused brought him to a halt. It was as though he was swimming in the ocean and had dived down into a warm layer. He felt the same way now. The air felt suddenly warmer. What was even stranger is that his feet had made a squishing sound as he stepped onto the flat area. He looked down, and the damp soil sparkled in his headlamp.

Dirk took another step and the last foot of cord fell from his hand.

"This is as good a place as any to find wee Martian beasties," he said, and walked back up the slope a few steps for dry land on which to put down the backpack and setup the camera gear.

He slid the legs of the tripods to their full extension, closing each set of three clamps as he extended the legs. Both tripods assembled he pushed he center post of the larger tripod up and through the top head, turned it 90 degrees, and fed it through again so that it was perpendicular to the ground. On the main head he placed the flash, and on the smaller end the much lighter camera. He attached the motion sensor to the camera with a cord – it could use wireless signals, but that took more battery power, and he wanted to maximize the time the camera was on. "I don't know when I'll be back to retrieve the gear," he thought.

Cord attached, he took the motion sensor, built a little platform of rocks to keep it off the damp soil, and pointed it directly in front of the camera. The camera's field of view would capture anything tripping the motion sensor. The motion sensor/flash assembly set up, he walked parallel to the slope for about ten feet. He then set up the infrared video camera on its own tripod. It would record for fourteen days, and the software would mark whenever motion appeared, making review much easier. Once the video was rendered skipping to each movement captured made it possible to analyze days of footage in hours.

Wishing he had a better method for coverage optimization, Dirk simply pointed the camera out into the darkness.

After double (and triple) checking that the cameras, flash and motion sensor were 'on' Dirk headed up the slope. "I'm glad I'm on my way out," he thought. His chronograph indicated 1 hour 6 minutes. The olive green paracord was easy enough to see against the fairly smooth surface of the cave as he hiked back, not because of its color but because it shimmered slightly in the light of the flashlight.

"It's chillier out here," he said, once he passed the narrow turns. Confident in his memory of the path, he made good time to the backpack. He untied the paracord and threw the backpack over his shoulders. A few minutes later he exited the cave into the caldera.

"I'll be back helping Radius in under two hours," he said to himself as he started climbing the caldera rim.

"Where is the camera gear?" Radius asked as Dirk walked up.

"I left it there," Dirk explained. "Mandy wants a time lapse series so I'll have to come back and get it another time. We can finish up these monuments and do the rest another day, since I have to come back for the camera gear anyway."

"Ok," said Radius. "We have one more to do today. It gets faster the more monuments we have established."

"Right on," said Dirk, as he picked up the monopod with the prism. It had been a good day. "I'm anxious to see the pictures - the waiting will be brutal. I wonder what Mandy will think about the soggy ground? I'll have to ask her tonight."

# (48) Day 28 1830 Duck and Discussion

Dirk finished his last bite of the _duck_ _confit_ before responding to Mandy's question. "This is fantastic chow," he said. "I'm positive the ground was soggy. I didn't see any actual puddles, but I could tell it was wet as I stepped on it, and when I built the little platform of rocks the sides that had been resting on the ground were clearly slick with moisture."

"Amazing," she said.

"What is supplying the heat?" Dirk asked. "I had thought it was going to get colder, or stay the same, but that (apparently) large space was noticeably warmer than the cave leading in."

"Mars is still geothermally active," Tom said. "Not nearly as much as Earth – but still in a limited way. The core remains molten and since we are on top of what used to be to the most geothermally active part of the planet, it makes sense that a molten flow may generate the additional heat. Perhaps molten lava flows from the core through passages beneath the cave system you found, and then back down into the core, in a loop. The lava rises, cools, and sinks keeping the cycle going, like a huge heat exchanger."

"I hope there isn't an eruption," Dirk said.

"Me too," said Mandy, "But I doubt there will be. Mars lacks the geologic dynamism necessary. No one has ever found evidence of lava flows, or even earthquakes, on Mars that are less than 100 million years old. The surface geologic change that does occurs is due to water and before we started messing with the place, CO2 sublimation."

"And of course the wind," said Tom.

"Yes, the wind. As the planet becomes wetter, thanks to the asteroids we've been dumping on it and the heating of the atmosphere, we might even see running water here in our lifetimes," Mandy continued.

"No doubt," said Tom. "The Company is finding more and more success with large scale comet and asteroid harvesting for water to make hydrogen fuel. I think we are going to find so much water in the C asteroid belt that we will actually store it on Mars for future use. The Elevator will make storage on Mars and transfer to the fuel producing ships in orbit affordable. Mars based storage will save the costs associated with tracking and maintaining the iceberg if we left them in space."

"I must say, Dirk" Mandy broke in, "I am extremely impatient for you to get back out to Tharsis Minutus. The idea of a Martian creature on film, sitting there on an SD card without anyone knowing, is making me crazy."

"I bet you can't even concentrate on your video games," said Tom to Mandy with a laugh.

"So true!" exclaimed Dirk. "I can't either! I never thought I'd care about anything enough to bring about such a situation, but here we are," said Dirk with facetious excess of drama in his voice.

"But seriously Dirk, when do you think you'll be able to get back out there?" Mandy asked.

"Radius and I have two arrivals on the schedule for tomorrow, but nothing the next day, so I should be able to sneak out then. I don't want to wear the weights when I go, so I'm considering making a super early start (before a certain police office is awake) in order to race there and back before anyone notices. I doubt he'd come down to the Crane Farm purposely to inspect me, but it would just be my luck to have him show up there."

"Another day – at least!" Mandy sighed. "No help for it."

Tom spoke up. "I could g-."

"No!" Mandy yelled, cutting him off and shocking both Dirk and Tom with her vehemence. She took a deep breath and tried to smile. "I mean that Dirk earned this opportunity. No fair for you to jump in after he's done the work and bring home the goods."

"And she doesn't want you to break a leg in the cave," Dirk said with a smile.

Tom laughed. "I think that's the real reason. Uncle Dirk here is expendable, isn't he?" he said to T2, holding him up in his arms and nodding.

T2 smiled and nodded back, happy to be involved in the conversation.

Even Mandy laughed.

"Dirk, you know what I mean," she said.

Dirk smiled. "I know – and I don't want anyone else to get the glory either, especially not Tom! I'll take T2 though."

Mandy took T2 from Tom and shook her fist at Dirk with a smile, "Oh no you won't!"

"Ok, Ok. But may I please have more duck?"

"Certainly," Mandy said, handing him T2. "I'll go get it."

# (49) Day 29 1030 The Director's New Tasking

"Come into my office," the Director said over the 1MC. Since they were the only ones in the building, she often used the building wide announcement system instead of texting him an alert on his glasses. It annoyed the heck out of the Sergeant because it made it impossible to ignore, or at least delay, responding to a summons. Sometimes he could 'ignore', at least for a few minutes, a text summons, claiming he was watching a training video (really a movie) or something and didn't notice it. Not hearing the 1MC blasting through the building was impossible.

As he walked down the passageway to her office, he once again thought that having someone else working here, a staff, even if not working directly for him, would not be a bad thing since it would provide an additional target for the Director's taskings. Right now he served as the enabler of each of her 'bright' ideas. The only saving grace was that she was in general as lazy as he. Her ideas were annoying, but tended to come in spurts, interspersed with long periods of inactivity when she, he surmised, watched videos from the nearly infinite library of digital content produced globally over the past 150 years that she had brought to Mars as her media allowance.

This summons to her office was the first in a few days, and as he walked in the door he hoped it was not the beginning of an active phase.

He noticed her hair immediately, and desperately scanned his memory for some clue as to the period it referenced – he only watched the latest and greatest programs, and so was hopeless when it came to identifying the historical fashions that occasionally came back into vogue. The result of a historical drama binge, he surmised, her huge hair looked like a mane but the specific reference escaped him completely.

"I love your hair – very retro," he said, hoping that would suffice.

She smiled.

The Sergeant let out a small sigh of relief. The Director looked like she wanted to say something, but didn't. They spent most of their time together, and he suspected she didn't have any friends here on Mars – she wanted to preserve her authority, much as he did. He did have a few drinking buddies, but saw them seldom. This entailed that the only social interaction they had was with each other. Therefore, they occasionally had these awkward moments when normal human social interaction impulses intruded into their work relationship.

"We will receive a diplo pouch with cryogenic blood vessels in the next day or so. Our colleagues are ready for additional product. A ship is returning to Earth in four weeks – I want to have a full set of product on board.

"Roger," the Sergeant said, wondering what this meant for him.

"I've been thinking about our friend Dirk, and how we can keep him properly engaged. We don't want him getting hurt out there, so I've been considering giving him a 'promotion'. As soon as the Elevator is completed, his job is obsolete, correct?" she asked.

"As far as I know. I'm not sure what the Company's employment plans for him are. Maybe there are jobs associated with Elevator operation that he can transition into."

"I don't know either," she snapped. "But that is not the point."

The Sergeant looked at her, knowing he could not say anything appropriate in response.

"Keeping him close is a priority, at least until more young people arrive on Mars, which I'm counting on happening once the Elevator is operational. We cannot scale this venture without more bodies. But that is a problem for the future. At this delicate stage, more importantly, we cannot afford an interruption in our supply, and our supply is totally dependent upon Dirk. He's our single point of failure."

The Sergeant had no idea where she was going with this line of thought. He maintained an interested, but not too interested, expression on his face and waited for her to continue.

"So, I want you to write a job description and statement of work justification for an assistant position here. I don't know that a security position is appropriate, given his run ins with the law, but I want you to figure out a job for Dirk here, in this building."

This was totally unexpected – Sergeant was trying to process the implications for his own position, and was as a result having difficulty keeping up with her order formulation.

"Uhh..." he said. Luckily the Director wasn't finished.

"The offer of a government position will be too tempting to pass up – any government job is better than getting dirty and cold working out on the edge of town taking care of machines like some maintenance robot. With him on the payroll, and under our constant observation, blood extraction will no longer be an issue. We'll even be able to make sure he is getting the rest he requires to deal with the 'contributions' he will 'voluntarily' (or lose his job) make. He'll be our little goose in a golden cage, too afraid to lose the pay and benefits we provide to make a fuss."

The Sergeant had no objections to make to the plan. "However," he thought to himself "he better not have a job that is better than mine, or that has the potential for advancement. I don't want the competition." Living as the Director's 'little buddy' was often annoying, but he recognized the value of his position 'adjacent to the throne' and didn't want some snot nosed kid, soon to be a grown man, pushing him out of his admittedly cushy position.

He noticed the Director looking at him expectantly: "Oh, yes ma'am, I'll get right on it."

"Good," the Director said. "I want the job description by the end of the week with a statement of work. I haven't decided what grade to make his position, so don't worry too much about the precise wording corresponding to the appropriate level. We can work on that next week."

"Yes ma'am," the Sergeant replied.

He turned and left. "Three days should be plenty of time to do the write up. I can copy something – plagiarism is the highest form of staff work, you know," he said to himself walking back to his office.

# (50) Day 29 The Drill

"Hi, Dirk," said Radius.

Dirk walked into the Crane Farm with an empty pack on his back.

"Only two deliveries today. We are getting close to the end. We'll have to start staging for the Elevator construction team soon. The final set of deliveries will consist of the drill and anchoring equipment"

"What drill?" asked Dirk, his mind on how to get out to Tharsis Minutus.

"The main element," Radius explained, "Is a self drilling drill and anchor. It drills itself down, trailing the main Elevator cable behind it. Drilling the mounting hole and installing the cable occurs in the same step. When it gets to the appropriate depth based on the local geological profile (42 meters) it anchors itself into the bedrock."

"I thought the elevator base was flexible so it could move, like a tree in breeze?" Dirk said.

"You are correct," agreed Radius. "However, the cable has to be anchored. It is then connected to the base, which as you point out, 'floats' so that it can adjust to the inevitable movement of the cable from the bedrock to orbit. The base contains the Elevator tensioner, and as it moves it absorbs the various dynamic loads impinging on the Elevator system, from both the movement of the planet, the movement of the system in orbit, and the main vector source, the weather in the atmosphere."

Dirk sighed. Before the experience in the cave the excitement at the prospect of bringing in a massive, and hugely important, load like the Drill would have bubbled up like Christmas anticipation. Now, in comparison, it was hard to get excited. Still, he started the pre-delivery checks and as he headed out to the garage to do the pre-starts on the Land Crane designated to move the Drill to the staging area he forgot about the cave for a while.

"Dirk, time to head to the tower," Radius informed him over the WiMAX net as he parked the Land Crane.

"Sweet," said Dirk. "I'm on my way."

He jogged over to the Tower. It was built on the other side of the berm, facing the main landing area. They called it the Tower, but it was no taller than a two-story building. A printed tube made in orbit, delivered by Sky Crane, Radius and Tom had extended it like a telescope into position. Directly in front of the Tower was a large satellite dish to receive the signals from the incoming Cranes as well as beaming the corrections from the Tower to the vehicles. Two other dishes served as backups and provided triangulation to increase the position determination accuracy of the system.

The entire top of the tower was enclosed in a clear dome, and this dome was covered with a protective tarp. The first order of business was therefore to uncover the dome. They always waited until the last minute in order to protect it – even without a dust storm the sand in the air scoured the surface, and Dirk didn't want anything to degrade his view of the Cranes as they came in.

He climbed up the exterior ladder, released the clasps securing the cover allowing it to fall into Radius' waiting arms. Radius caught the cover, Dirk climbed down, and they quickly folded and brought it inside the tower.

Dirk took his seat and swiveled back in order to face up through the dome. Radius took the co-lander seat behind him and swiveled up. They both operated the controls making the final adjustments – the control computers averaged their signals, and if they were too far out of synch an alarm sounded. Each session was recorded, and Dirk and Radius always compared their lines to see who was closet to the optimal track. Radius generally won, but only by a percentage point or two, which pleased Dirk immensely. "All those video games paid off," he'd say to himself.

As a tool to facilitate visual tracking, before every landing he'd draw lines demarcating the proposed track. This way when he acquired a visual on the Crane he'd discern immediately how it was trending against the grease pencil line provided baseline. If the incoming Crane deviated significantly from the intended track, he could instantly prepare himself for a possible bug out to the Shelter.

"Crane inbound," Radius said. The Crane was now in range of their radar and in another 2 minutes they would gain control potential.

Dirk double checked the proposed track, marked the time, and began staring at the spot on the dome where the Crane should appear as a bright spot in the dusty sky. His watch alarm beeped as he discerned the inbound Crane.

"On track," he said.

"Concur," Radius replied.

Dirk shifted his attention continuously between the radar display and the actual position of the Crane through the dome. The system was designed to rely entirely on the head up display (HUD) projected in front of him, but he didn't trust it. When he'd first started he'd been totally enamored, but after a few Cranes he realized there was a slight lag between the HUD display and the actual Crane position. After he and Radius discussed it, they hypothesized the lag was caused by the time it took the signals to travel through the cables from the other dishes, synchronize in the main receiver and retransmit to the HUD. Perhaps they had been installed incorrectly, or there was a slight misalignment – it shouldn't be a problem, but it was, so Dirk had adjusted the HUD down and started his grease pencil system. Not useless, the HUD was insufficiently perfect to trust with the decisions necessary to avoid impact with a stray Crane on a constant bearing, decreasing range.

Without Dirk and Radius (or someone) controlling from the ground, the deliveries were in effect kinetic attacks on the landing zone. A human in the loop, given the vagaries of Martian weather, and the persistence of the Galactic Ghoul guarding Mars, remained necessary to help ensure the safety of the City.

He grabbed the controller, glad he'd insisted on a new one. The controller (identical to a video game controller) used for the final stage Crane adjustments, was printed to fit precisely his hands. His hands had grown, and the first controller had become too small soon after he'd arrived. When every motion mattered, a poorly fitted controller could be disastrous. The Company, initially skeptical he needed a new one – they hadn't thought about it, since all of their other employees were fully grown adults – was convinced by the hand scan he'd submitted.

"This is a big one," Dirk said.

"Indeed," Radius agreed.

"It's responding nicely though," said Dirk. "I think the larger mass is actually making it easier to control."

"Concur," said Radius, always at his most professional when they were bringing in a Crane.

"Let's bring this down at the Echo field," said Dirk.

"Roger," said Radius. He switched the landing field from Charlie to Echo. They had three fields, Alpha, Charlie and Echo. They skipped Bravo and Delta in order to avoid confusion if people became lazy and stopped using the NATO alphanumeric prowords – B and C and D sounded too similar for safety.

"It wants to head there anyway," said Dirk, "And I don't mind spending the Land Crane fuel to keep this big boy at a safe distance."

"Concur," said Radius, and mentally made the adjustment. The landing zone indicator on the HUD switched from Charlie to Echo – it was only a difference of 500 meters, but the 30% increase in their margin of safety reassured Dirk. He took risks he probably shouldn't rock climbing and exploring, but never on the job.

Dirk watched carefully as the Crane fired its final retro rockets sequence, lowered the cargo, detached the cables, and settled to a stop with a 10 yard offset, and then confused almost jumped out of his seat.

"Beep beep beep" the out of control alarm sounded.

The Crane landed dead center of Echo and yet the alarm still sounded.

"Hey Radius, what's going on?" Dirk said, figuring that there was a false alarm in the system. Maybe the switch from Charlie to Echo hadn't registered in all of the systems, and so the alarm indication was sounding because of the successful landing in Echo.

"Another package inbound," Radius said. "Unscheduled diplo pouch."

"Arrahgh!" Dirk yelled. "Why would those idiots send a pouch at the same time we have this High Value Package inbound!?"

"It must have hit some high level winds," said Radius, "Because it is way off course. It is headed East."

Dirk smiled at this. This would be the first time he was glad for a Diplo pouch going off course.

"It's ok Radius, I'll go get it. And while I'm out there I'm going to run over to Tharsis Minutus and pick up the cameras for Mandy."

"Ok," Radius said. "Do you require my assistance?"

"No, if you could drive the Drill over to the staging area while I'm getting the Diplo that would be great. The Land Crane is ready to go."

"Roger," said Radius.

"Thanks," Dirk said. "I'm going to grab some water, and get a head start. Give me the best fix you can – I'll check out with you before I'm beyond WiMAX range."

"Will do," said Radius, not looking away from his HUD. He didn't really have to look, since he directly received the data. Sophisticated robots, like Radius, were programmed to act in ways that humans would expect even when there was no functional purpose for doing so. Several generations of robot passed before designers settled upon the appropriate degree of phatic action in order to avoid the valley of the uncanny. Therefore, now, especially for people who had grown up with robots, the phatic programs ensured the robot feedback felt appropriate. The degree of programming was tailorable of course, and some people, mostly techs, turned it off completely – they wanted robots to act like robots, not robots acting in ways emulating suboptimal human practices.

Dirk took off his 'heavy' clothes – the diplo pouch plus the camera gear would constitute enough of an additional load. Plus, he wanted to move quickly. He filled up his suit reservoir, grabbed extra water, his backpack, and straps with which to bundle up the tripods, making them easier to carry.

He set off at a jog.

"Radius, I'm on my way. What is the latest projected landing point?"

"Due East, about 3 KM. It is way off – must be very light."

"That is good for carrying it back, but man they should redo their targeting. That isn't even close!" Dirk said.

"The area of uncertainty is beyond the rift," said Radius.

"Roger," Dirk replied, and noticed that the WiMAX indicator showed only one bar.

"Dirk, Dirk," said Radius, "The Sergeant is approaching the Crane Farm! I say again, the Sergeant is approaching the Crane Farm. Return –"

Dirk kept walking – if he went back now, without the weight bearing gear and with the backpack and straps for the tripods he'd have to respond to a bunch of questions, and he didn't have any good answers.

"The diplomatic pouch will give me cover," he said to himself. "But I must go now – if they restrict me for violating the terms of my punishment I might not be able to get out here again. And if I can't, Tom will be tempted to, and I can't allow him to take that sort of risk."

He stopped to reconsider – and noticed he was beyond the WiMAX signal. "No point in going back now," Dirk broke back into a job. "I'll find the pouch on my own," he thought.

He slowed down to a fast walk after a few minutes, took a long drink and looked at his watch. "Another 20 minutes to the rift, and 30 minutes after that to Tharsis Minutus. 30 minutes up, 30 minutes down, 15 to get the gear, 45 up, 30 down, an hour to recover the diplo pouch and 45 minutes back." He did a quick calculation: 6 hours or so. "It is 1000 now, so I'll be back by 1600, with an hour to spare before sunset. Imminently doable."

# (51) Day 29 1355 Camera Retrieval

Dirk drank the last of his second bottle of water. "Two down, two to go," he said to himself as he reslung his backpack, turned on his headlights and knee lights, and strode into the cave.

His excitement soared as he reached the part of the cave where the tunnel made the tight turn, and he gave a little laugh of excitement when he felt the temperature suddenly increase.

"Yes!" He stopped where the tunnel opened up and listened. Nothing. "Silly – what did I expect? Crickets?" he said to himself.

He snapped pictures of the ground with the Book camera as he approach the tripods.

"Whoa!" he said, almost dropping the Book. The flash had surprised him. "The motion sensor is still working – very good." He took one more picture with the Book, put it away in the backpack and grabbed the tripod straps. He turned off the camera and removed it from the tripod.

"Man, I wish I could rewind it, and check to see...." But he didn't for two reasons. One, his time was short and two, Mandy, Tom and T2 should be there when the film rolled. He wrapped the camera in the bubble wrap he'd brought and moved onto the flashes. After putting them carefully into the backpack he broke down the tripods and secured them to either side of the pack. He swung the flashlight around, checking he hadn't missed anything. He paused, scanning the wet rocks for any sign of life – nothing.

"But the water looks deeper now," he thought. That of course was not saying much, but a even puddle on Mars was impressive, and these were clearly puddles.

He checked his watch. 1530. "Lots of time – I hope the Sergeant hasn't spent it waiting for me."

After pulling on the backpack, and adjusting the tripods so they didn't hit the back of his legs (or head) as he walked, he took one last look into the darkness, staring futility past the limit of his flashlight's beam, and headed back to the surface.

"Mars is accessible to the strong, not the technologically enabled," his dad always said. As Dirk looked over the rim of the dead volcano he had to agree. Though as he looked at the Crane Farm through the dusty air he thought, "That will probably change when the Elevator is complete. With a cheap way to deliver water, people and equipment everything will become reachable, like on Earth. But not yet."

He looked back into the crater, down the entrance of the cave. On the one hand he was desperately excited for some evidence of life to rest on the memory cards in his backpack. On the other, he felt like Tharsis Minutus was his – he was the only human ever to have slept there, he'd explored the caldera and cave. "Once we have the proof of life," he thought, "that will no longer be the case. Everyone will want to come here."

"But that is silly – its not mine," he thought, as he scanned the plain below between Tharsis Minutus and the Crane Farm, the rift about two thirds of the way between them.

His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a bright spot of yellow – "The diplo pouch!"

He heaved a sigh of relief. "Not too far off from my preferred course back," he said. Acquiring a mental fix on the pouch, based on its position relative to the Rift and Tharsis Minutus he headed down. It was easy to see from here, but even a small depression or hill could conceal it from his line of sight when he was at ground level, so he made sure he could find it using several landmarks.

At the bottom Dirk removed his backpack, retightened the straps holding the tripods on, and took a long drink. His suit reservoir was still full, so he could drink from that via the suit tube as he hustled for the diplo pouch. He'd save his last bottle for the final leg of the trip to the Crane Farm.

Making good time, he reached the diplomatic pouch in under an hour. The objects inside hit one another and rang like Tibetan singing bowls a Buddhist temple when he picked up the bag. Dirk was simultaneously annoyed and entranced. He shook the bag again. The sound cascaded away from him across the plain. "Gorgeous!" he said out loud. "But this couldn't wait for normal delivery?"

He couldn't stay mad, however, bathed in the sound. He shook the bag to ring the bells as he walked. Gazing at the Three Sisters to his left and nothing but the Rift in front of him, hiding the Crane Farm from his view, he felt completely alone in a magic sonic bubble.

His pleasant walk was interrupted by the thought of the Sergeant and Radius' interrupted message. "What could he want? The diplomatic pouch will give me the cover for hiking out of range, but I don't want to have to explain the tripods, cameras and lack of weighted clothing."

Dirk scanned the area for the Sergeant walking out to meet him as he approached the Crane Farm. Keeping his eye on the WiMAX network strength indicator in his glasses, as soon as one bar appeared he put out a call to Radius.

"Radius, Radius, Dirk over."

"This is Radius, roger over," Radius replied.

"Is our friend still at the Crane Farm?" he asked.

"No," said Radius.

Dirk suddenly felt lighter. "Roger over," he said. He didn't want to talk about it over the net. Once they were in WiMAX range their communications were potentially subject to monitoring. "Sad that I'm worried about that way out here. I'll be back at the Crane Farm in another 15 minutes," he thought.

# (52) Day 29 1555 Dirk Returns with Camera Gear

"Hey Radius!" Dirk yelled. Radius walked out of the garage.

"How'd the move go?" asked Dirk. "You get it to the Drill area?"

"Yes," said Radius.

"How'd the Land Crane work – any problems? And how much fuel is left?"

"No problems, and under half a tank. Plenty for the remaining required movements," Radius said.

"Bummer," responded Dirk, looking toward the City. He shook his head and looked at Radius. "Sorry, I mean, not bummer that it went well, but bummer that there is less than half a tank. I was hoping to take it into town, using the Diplo pouch as an excuse, but not with only that much fuel left. We don't have time to refuel it now. But after I get my gear on, can you please help me carry this stuff? I'm anxious to get the cameras to Mandy."

"Sure," said Radius.

Dirk realized that he hadn't shared the reason for his excitement with Radius – he wasn't sure why. "Maybe I'm afraid he'd have good reasons for not pursuing the investigation," he said to himself. "But too late now! The footage is captured."

As he put his weighted clothes on in the garage his excitement again started to build. "I'm glad I didn't wear this stuff on the recovery mission, that's for sure."

He suddenly remembered the Sergeant's highly unusual visit.

"What did the Sergeant want?" Dirk asked.

"To see if the diplomatic pouch had arrived. He must have been notified before the alarm sounded here," Radius answered.

"I wish they'd given us a similar heads up," Dirk said.

"Yes," said Radius. Though Dirk didn't notice the significance of Radius' response, it was actually something that had taken the programmers years to perfect in the early part of the widespread use of humanoid robots. Many of the human phatic verbalizations do not logically require responses, and yet humans rely on such responses to smooth their interactions – the "Yeah, I know, sure, ok" the smile, nod or shrug are an integral part of human communication. Robots of course initially did not respond to those unspoken queries for agreement that humans sensed and responded to naturally. The programmers, many of them not disposed to be especially sensitive to social cues themselves, were eventually (with difficulty) convinced by the human factors people to include the logically unnecessary response loops in the robot programming. Referred to in general as "Smile and Nod" responses, the subroutines increased dramatically the human evaluation of the Robots workability and reduced the feeling of the uncanny robots without such programming often stimulated.

# (53) Day 29 1705 Pouch Delivery

Dirk stopped two "streets" down from their destination, out of sight of City Hall.

"Hey Radius, can you please wait here for me with the camera gear? I don't want to stimulate the Sergeant's curiosity. I'll deliver the diplo pouch and be right back."

"Certainly," said Radius.

Dirk started to jog over to City Hall, but stopped when whatever it was in the diplo pouch banged together, making that beautiful ringing sound. "I hope I haven't cracked them or something," he thought. "But they sure sound nice."

He walked into City Hall lobby and announced, "Diplomatic pouch".

"Deliver to my office," the Sergeant said immediately over the 1MC.

"I'm glad I had Radius wait – the Sergeant must have been sitting in his office waiting for the building to let him know I was here," Dirk thought.

Dirk walked down the passageway to the Sergeant's office. The Sergeant met him at the door.

"I'll take that," he said, reaching for the bag.

Dirk handed it over. The Sergeant turned his back to Dirk as he opened the bag. He then looked over his shoulder back at him with a strange smile.

"Thank you," he said, followed by his normal, curt "Dismissed."

As Dirk walked out he thought, "Maybe he really likes bells? Weird." But as soon as he reached the street and headed back toward Radius the excitement bubbled up in him once again, and he broke into a run.

"What is on those memory cards?"

# (54) Day 29 1710 Supplies for the next phase of the Director's Plan examined

The Sergeant walked into the Director's office with the contents of the diplo pouch in a cardboard box.

"The vacuum flasks have arrived, Director," he said.

"Bring them here!" she said, standing up at her desk.

Gently she took one of the six flasks out and examined it closely.

"Fantastic! So we stick him and then attach this flask to the needle assembly, and the vacuum sucks the blood right out?"

"Yes ma'am," the Sergeant said.

"Beautiful. How many can we fill at a time?"

"Standard practice is one, but reading the literature I think we could do two. He'd be pretty wiped out after giving that much blood – probably won't be able to stand up for a day."

"That is not our problem. We'll have to collect the contributions when we don't have any diplomatic pouches arriving, or I suppose, major Elevator parts. These must be filled and returned on the ship that arrives, and departs, next week. I'm concerned that our exclusivity will be undermined once the Elevator is operational, so maximizing our revenue and developing our brand now is essential."

"You really think the Elevator will ruin this project?" the Sergeant asked, disappointed. He'd already been mentally spending his share of the profits, and looking forward to Elevator completion because it would enable him to gain delivery of the things he lusted after and would soon have the financial wherewithal to purchase.

"Not if we get the brand established - but too many Terrans will dilute our unique value proposition. Ideally, I'd like to get more 'native' Martians here before the Elevator becomes operational, especially young ones. We are selling blood purified by youth and isolation."

The Sergeant thought for a moment. "There is a baby here, you know."

"Baby!" the Director said. "I'd forgotten about it. Whose is it?"

"I think it is the Power Plant operator's kid. I can find out."

"Excellent. Give me some options tomorrow on how we could get it in here for 'medical evaluation'."

The Sergeant walked back to his office, his dismay at the Elevator threat to their new business fading as he visualized the underground ads for 'Baby blood' elixir.

# (55) Day 29 1810 Examining the Evidence

Dirk knocked on Tom's door. He'd considered going home first to shower but couldn't wait.

Tom opened the door, with T2 perched on his shoulders. Tom held T2's right leg in his hand.

"Hello Radius, Dirk!" said Tom. "Come on in." T2 made a happy noise in greeting and wiggled up and down.

"Hi T2," Dirk said.

"Good afternoon," said Radius to them both.

"Who is that?" Mandy called from further inside the house.

"Radius and his buddy Dirk," Tom answered back.

Mandy rushed out, a book in her hand, and smiled when she saw the tripods. "So you retrieved them! Fantastic. Did you watch?"

"No, I waited for you," Dirk said.

"Good – after downloading and rendering the video, we can jump straight to the motion. Come into the office – I'm all set up and ready to go," Mandy said.

Radius placed the tripods in the closet while Dirk took the cameras out of the backpack and handed them to Mandy. She removed the holographic memory cards and put them into the readers on the computer.

"We have 4 days of video, right? So that should take about 10 minutes to render. Dirk, you want a snack while we wait?" Mandy asked.

"Sure, that would be great. Let me wash my hands so I can play with T2."

Dirk washed up and went into the living room where T2 was in his walker.

"Tom, did you make that here?" Dirk asked.

"Yes, I sure did. Printed it up from a Terran plan. I made a few modifications, but didn't want to go too crazy – the Earth model has been extensively tested for safety – I didn't want to innovate into injury. All the hazard avoidance systems are set to Earth parameters."

"It looks like fun. How fast can you go in that, T2?" Dirk asked.

T2 bounced in response.

"He moves it randomly occasionally, but he can't make it go where he wants quite yet. I suspect one day soon he'll figure it out and cruise around everywhere," Tom explained. "He doesn't quite have the coordination down, but it will come."

Mandy brought Dirk a large glass of water and a piece of pizza.

"Pizza!" Dirk exclaimed. "Fantastic, thanks."

"Your welcome," said Mandy.

"That's homemade – not dehydrated," Tom said.

Mouth full, Dirk said, "It's amazing!"

Dirk devoured the pizza. "So good, thanks, Mandy," he yelled. A chime sounded from the office as he put his plate and glass in the dishwasher.

"It's ready," called Mandy.

Dirk went into the living room to grab T2. Tom was picking him up. "I'll hold him," said Dirk.

"Ok, thanks," said Tom. "Let's watch some videos!"

Mandy sat at the computer, and Tom pulled up a chair. Radius and Dirk stood behind them, Dirk holding T2 so he could see. Mandy's hands moved quickly in front of her, sensors in the monitor translating her movements into software actions.

The video from each camera was displayed on the screen - one in visible light, the other in infrared. The visible light camera also took still pictures with the flash whenever the flash motion sensor activated it or every 10 minutes. The infrared was purely video and had recorded constantly.

"I've set it up to fast forward to the first motion detection," Mandy said as she pressed play.

The film stopped immediately.

"It's hideous!" said Radius.

The video showed Dirk walking back and forth through the frame.

"Very funny. I was triple checking that I had the cameras and flashes turned on," Dirk said sheepishly.

Both Tom and Mandy laughed, and T2 joined in.

"You think that's funny too, huh?" said Dirk to T2 giving him a little hug.

Mandy smiled at Dirk. "No, that's good, I'm glad you did," she said.

"Fast forward onward!" said Tom.

Mandy flicked her hand in the air quickly and the video sped ahead. As it did, Dirk was again surprised that Radius had a sense of humor.

The frame counter advanced on each of the selections, but nothing changed. Even the water remained still for the most part, an occasional flicker the only indication that it was not perfectly motionless.

And then it stopped.

"Look!" said Mandy, pointing at the upper part of the screen. Something moved past, but it was impossible to tell what it was.

"Let's wait and see if it comes more clearly into the frame," Mandy said, excited.

600 frames later it crawled/slithered into view, with big eyes, two froglike arms with which it sort of walked, and a long body that tapered into a tail.

For a moment they were speechless – no one had ever seen living alien life, and it was there on the screen, captured.

"It's like a variation on a lungfish or a frog," Mandy whispered. Tom reached out and held her hand, and looked at T2 who was not entirely enrapt by this particular video. But he'd seen it.

"Should we Cellini T2?" Tom asked Mandy.

She shook her head and looked at him quickly before saying "No, of course not he's too little," and returned her attention to the screen.

"What's a Cellini?" Dirk asked.

"I'll tell you later," said Tom.

The creature seemed to lick a couple of rocks, and then disappeared from the frame. Mandy waited a couple of minutes, letting the video run, before rewinding, selecting the best few shots of the creature and printing them off. She then hit the fast forward button again and the video advanced for about a day before another frog creature appeared. They couldn't tell if it was the same one, but looked very similar. This time it only passed through. Mandy printed a still picture of it anyway, and they continued the scan.

# (56) Day 29 1850 Revelation

Without fanfare, or any indication that new phase of human (and Martian) history had begun, they saw her walk into the frame on the infrared video, stop suddenly and cover her eyes when the flash went off – and disappear.

Too amazed, no one said anything. When one expects another frog like creature to slither into the frame, and an obviously female alien in a blue dress appears instead, it takes a while for the speech centers to reengage.

"How strong is that flash," Tom finally asked.

"Not strong," Mandy said. "It's on the lowest setting. I hope it didn't hurt her eyes. She must be accustomed to low cave lighting."

As she spoke the flash in the video went off again.

"She's back," Mandy said.

Nothing happened, and then once again the flash illuminated the space.

Another pause.

The flash fired again, and then they saw her at the top right of the image on the infrared display. She was moving slowly toward the tripods, covering her eyes with a bag in her right hand and what appeared to be a lantern, glowing blue like her dress, in the other. The flash was set to go off only once when the motion detector was tripped, and reset after 10 seconds.

"Look at that," Tom said admiringly. "She figured out the delay,"

The alien walked past the tripods with the cameras, and they could hear a rustling as if she was getting something out of her bag. The infrared light camera moved slightly. They were surprised by the sudden shift in view as she removed the camera from the tripod. Her face came into view occasionally as she turned the camera around, examining it free of the tripod. They were treated to a close up of her face as she peered into the lens.

"She must see her reflection in the lens," Mandy speculated. The Martian had large eyes and thick wavy hair.

"She's extremely tall – she lifted the camera off the tripod and it seemed to travel a bit before her face came into focus," Tom said.

The alien put the camera back on the tripod and removed the other camera.

"She figured out the clasp so easily and worked it so smoothly," Mandy said.

"I had trouble getting the cameras on," said Dirk.

"Amazing," Tom whispered.

She replaced the camera quickly, and then stood back, looking at both cameras. Her dress glowed with a blue light, as did the lantern.

Walking carefully she apparently returned to the flash. She held her bag in her hand again when she came back into view.

"She took the cover she'd placed on the flash to protect her eyes off before leaving," Tom observed.

The alien walked out of sight, back in the direction from which she arrived.

"The camera's are in the exact same alignment as before she removed them," Mandy said. "Fascinating."

Dirk felt overwhelmed. He'd daydreamed about getting video of whatever little creature, a primitive snake perhaps, that had made the marks in the sand he'd noticed after the night he'd spent in the cave. Never had he thought of this, a tall, elegant alien woman in a blue dress investigating the cameras.

"Why haven't we seen any evidence of them before?" Dirk asked.

"We've never looked underground. Maybe their food chain is based on chemosynthesis like ours is based on photosynthesis. As a result, their biosphere is underground and though we have detected voids in the planet, we figured they were the result of volcanic activity, like the lava tubes on Earth. Perhaps in actuality they are a combination of both volcanism and design, a natural and artificial combination to make the planet livable. Their atmosphere has been too thin to provide protection from cosmic rays for millions of years, we think, so living underground makes sense."

Mandy scanned back and printed out several pictures of the alien, including the close-up of her face.

"Can you please make a couple for me," Dirk asked. "I want to show my Dad."

Radius picked up one of the creature pictures. "Should we not be careful with this information?" he asked.

"What do you mean," said Tom.

"This constitutes an entirely new, and extremely large, data set affecting thoughts about our utilization of the planet, none of which has been taken into account by the Company decision making processes thus far," Radius explained.

Tom thought for a moment. "You are exactly right Radius. This is incredibly exciting, but I think we should take an operational pause before releasing the information. It will give us time to think through the second, third and fourth order consequences, or at least start to frame the problems, and give Mandy here time to write up the discovery."

"You know Radius, I was going to blast out the video to the world, but you are right. Very good thinking. Let's consider this carefully. It is some of the biggest news ever, and we needn't rush," said Mandy.

"I have two questions," Dirk said. "First, What does it mean to 'Cellini'? he asked.

"Benvenuto Cellini was a Florentine goldsmith in the Renaissance, and wrote a biography," Tom answered.

"Tom's favorite section is when Cellini is talking about seeing a salamander in a fire," Mandy explained. "He was with his dad, and when they saw it his dad boxed his ears. Cellini was understandably upset by this, and asked his dad why he had hit him. His dad explained that it was because he wanted him to remember it, and then unexpected pain would enable him to do that," Mandy said. "At the time they thought salamanders lived in fire, but really they were often seen in fire when the wood they lived in was thrown into the fireplace. Tom claimed, even before we were married, that he would Cellini his kids to help them remember key events."

"But..." Tom said, "Even for seeing the first alien life I think T2 is too young to benefit from a Cellining. Dirk however..." he stood up and drew his fist back.

Dirk held T2 up between them, using him as a shield.

"I'll remember, I'll remember!" he said with a laugh. T2 laughed too.

"What is your second question?" Mandy asked.

"May I show my Dad?"

"Of course," Tom said and Mandy nodded in agreement. "He's the person I want to talk to about all of this."

"Great," said Dirk. "May I have a few pictures?"

Mandy handed him the pictures, and then took them back. "Let's protect these with a folder," she said. "I have one around here somewhere. And put them in your backpack. Thanks for the excellent advice Radius. If we had gone with our first impulses I think we'd be in a world of hurt we are not ready for."

"My pleasure," said Radius.

Dirk handed T2 to Tom – Mandy was staring at the screen. "Ok, I'm off to see Dad. We should probably only talk about this face to face. How late can we come over tonight?"

"Anytime," said Mandy. "I won't be sleeping for a long, long time I suspect – too excited."

"Ok," said Dirk. "See you."

He and Radius headed over to his dad's house. "Dad should be home by now," Dirk said.

"Yes," Radius agreed.

# (57) Day 29 1941 Dirk Receives Great News that is the Worst he's ever Heard

"Dad, Dad!" Dirk yelled as he ran into his dad's house. Radius closed the airlock door behind him.

Dirk's dad looked away from the holographic display on which he was manipulating equations and stood up excitedly when Dirk entered the room.

"Dirk, great news!" he said. "The Company evaluated your comet to Tharsis Minutus idea, loved it, and is sending a comet intended for lunar harvesting to Tharsis Minutus instead! A large water source close to the Elevator planet based terminus will greatly simplify the energy provision problem for the Elevator, and obviate the requirement to occupy an entire ship to power the Elevator from orbit. The original plan was to construct a water pipeline to supply a hydrogen generator, but as you know, the Crane Farm/Elevator is higher than the City, and thus would have required an entire pumping infrastructure. Tharsis Minutus is at a higher elevation than the Crane Farm, and so gravity will pressurize the system, dramatically reducing the costs."

He smiled at Dirk – "Fantastic idea, son, and we're going to implement it. We've shrunk the delay between flash and bang, and you'll be swimming in Tharsis Minutus in a few days."

Dirk was stunned into silence. He looked at Radius – Radius looked back, appearing to want to say something, but the dynamics of the moment were too much for him and he looked away.

The excitement filling Dirk changed direction as he stood there, shifting its polarity and amplifying its intensity.

His dad noticed the instant change in Dirk's demeanor and bearing.

"What's wrong, son?" he asked.

"Dad, I have to tell you something."

"Ok," his dad said.

"There is life on Mars," Dirk said.

"Yes son, I know there is – it's us."

"No Dad, I mean the original life."

His dad looked at Radius for some sort of insight, which Radius naturally failed to deliver. Mr. K wandered over to his recliner, slowly shaking his head. Sitting down, he said, "I'm not following you, son."

Dirk walked over and handed him the photos.

He looked at them intently, flipping between the frog creature and the body shot in the dress before he stopped at the face close-up.

"You're not goofing me, pulling my leg?" he asked.

Dirk shook his head. "No sir."

His dad continued to stare at the photos and then jumped up. "This is fantastic! Did you show Mandy? And Tom?" He began to walk around excitedly.

"Mandy has the video – these stills are video captures. I spent the last two hours watching the footage with Mandy, Tom and T2."

"Why didn't you call me over?" his dad asked.

"As soon as the shock wore off I ran over here," Dirk said.

"Does anyone else know?"

"No, we figured we should wait a little while and think through the various unintended consequences that might emerge."

"Good thinking," his dad said, staring at the floor in thought.

"So why do you look so sad? I know the comet is nothing compared to this. Life on Mars!"

"Dad, I took these pictures in the Tharsis Minutus cavern."

Mr. K looked up quickly. "That explains it – your dour expression when I told you about the comet. Oh man," he said, shaking his head.

Then he jumped up and went to his control surface. "Once we figure out how much time we have before impact, we plan backwards from that." He began scanning for the comet location and estimated time of impact from the Mars Orbital Control site.

"How long does it take you to get there and back," he asked, not looking up from the control surface.

"3 hours," said Dirk, "at my best."

"Do you think we can warn them?" his dad asked.

"I don't even know where to find them, exactly. I left the cameras at the surface of what appeared to be a lake about a ten minute walk from the entrance of the cave. I don't really know how far it is. My sense of direction and distance failed me underground. But she didn't appear at the cameras for two days, and seemed to be exploring herself..." Dirk finished hesitantly.

"So you don't really know where to find them," his dad said, "And would be getting deeper and deeper into the danger zone as you did."

"But we have to do something!" Dirk said.

"Yes, yes, of course," his dad responded. "Let me figure out how much time we have. Impact at 2107 Airy Mean Time (AMT) on Mars Sol Dates (MSD) 89592. It is 2006 now here in AMT-9, so it will impact Tharsis Minutus at 1607 and we have 21 hours to figure something out."

"21 hours! No way. We can't do anything in that short a time," Dirk almost whined, emotionally devastated. "It's all my fault," he said sitting down and putting his head in his hands.

Radius stood there, helpless and feeling completely at a loss.

"Can the ship that adjusted the comet's trajectory reengage and change its delivery course?" Dirk asked suddenly, hope suffusing his face.

"Good idea. Let me check." Mr. K looked at the display for a moment, checking the ship's location.

"No," he said sadly. "It is too far away. It is a tug, without the speed to turn around and catch up."

Dirk groaned.

Mr. K stood there for a moment, alternatively looking at his devastated son and the picture of the Martian in his hand. After opening his mouth to say something, he thought better of it. Dirk needed some time to process the situation, as did he.

"Are you hungry?" he asked Dirk. "We'll think better with full stomachs."

Dirk nodded "No."

Eating quickly, Mr. K finished dinner and headed over to Mandy and Tom's to discuss the situation with them in order to better understand the Martian discovery.

Dirk didn't even look up as his dad left – he couldn't face anyone right now, including Radius.

# (58) Day 29 1900 The Director and Sergeant Hatch a New Plan

"Time to being the next phase of the Project, now that we have the gear," The Director said.

"Yes ma'am," the Sergeant replied, displeased at the interruption to his 'family time'.

She'd called him back to her office after work hours, interrupting his post-dinner video watching. His routine mapped specific video types to his daily activities. Upon awakening he watched humorously violent cartoons. His dedication to watching cartoons in the morning was such that he'd used his limited weight allowance to bring a series of waterproof screens, so he could watch in the shower. The cartoons continued through breakfast, but once he arrived at the office he switched to crime dramas – he was a professional security officer after all. Two movies took him to lunch, which was generally accompanied by some sort of sports, usually football. It didn't matter that it wasn't live – he enjoyed the spectacle, and switched back and forth between the various views available – the entire field, the key parts of the play, or the perspective from a particular player, (the quarterback, running back, etc.). The autoselect option that showed the perspective of whoever it was that had the ball was his favorite. He'd watch a season at a time, so he could get emotionally invested in several teams and see how they fared, and simultaneously ran a fantasy football bracket. As a result, the lunchtime viewing often bled into the afternoon's scheduled reality shows – watching those shows he felt as though he was interacting with the best type of friends – interesting, attractive, and never asking for favors. Indeed, the reality shows met 98% percent of his social needs – his official duties, which generally took less than an hour a week (or at least they did before this "special project" of the Director's became a time sink) requiring interaction with the 'locals' and the Director met the rest.

His post-work workout viewing was dedicated to more sports, mostly individual activities, like the AR Games, base jumping, free riding, surfing, rock climbing, and kite surfing. Sufficiently pumped up by the viewing, he'd get into his CentripGym. After his workout he'd have dinner watching another reality show, as though he'd gone home to be with his family. After this 'family time' he'd watch funny videos, either comedy shows or cartoons or videos of people doing crazy stuff on camera. Put in a cheerful mood by the videos, he'd fall asleep, the bed sensing when he was entered the initial sleep cycle and stopping the playback so he could start at that precise point the next evening.

"Let's take the first two donations of blood tomorrow," the Director said. "I understand that there are not any shipments scheduled, so if our little friend is slightly 'tired' as a result of his donation, it won't matter that he cannot work effectively at the Crane Farm."

"I'll send him an email summons," the Sergeant said.

"Make it for the morning, before he heads to the Crane Farm," the Director said.

"What time is that?" asked the Sergeant.

"How should I know!" the Director snapped. "You figure it out – that is your job."

"Yes ma'am," the Sergeant said, and walked out to his own office.

He sat down at his desk and thought quickly. "Actually, I don't care when he heads down to the Crane Farm. He can come back if he's left already. I'm not going to waste the time to figure it out. The decision made he wrote, "Dirk Kamameaha you are directed to report to City Hall for medical monitoring at 0900" and set it to send at 0800. He didn't want to give him enough notice to find some excuse not to appear.

This project was taking more of his time than he'd hoped. However, his displeasure at the work requirement was assuaged by two factors. First, the income stream this activity promised, and second the pleasure he'd take in causing that bratty jerk Dirk pain. He'd practiced with the needle, but had already decided to skip the pre-squirt of local anesthetic. He'd say that it was too expensive to ship to Mars, even though all needles included it – removing it had actually taken some work, but Dirk's discomfort would make it worthwhile.

The Sergeant returned to his video 'friends'.

# (59) Day 29 2125 (19 hours and 35 minutes to impact) Dirk Struggles to Counter the Disaster

"Radius, I'm going to walk and think – I'll be back in a while," Dirk said, heading out the door. He didn't wait for a response.

Dirk headed down to the Crane Farm. "I'll get more water, leave the weights and head out to Tharsis Minutus," he said to himself. "I'll warn them, and they can evacuate to a safer location."

He ran various scenarios through his mind – "I race into the cave, and she is waiting there, at the shore of the lake..."

But as he walked down the path to the Crane Farm he realized the idea's futility. "Even if I find them, I have no way to communicate – what, I'll use hand signals to indicate an imminent comet impact? In addition, what if that was the only place on Mars they were able to live? Maybe that was why there had never been any evidence of life found, because they had died out except for this small group in some perfectly balanced geothermically activated cave system, that existed no where else on the planet."

He paused at the berm, and looked to his left, where the emergency shelter lay hidden. It was bad enough when it was he and Radius alone cowering in the hole waiting for impact – now he'd sentenced an entire species to a similar fate. They didn't even know it was coming, could do nothing about it.

Dirk abandoned the path and took the hard way up the side of the berm. Working up a sweat, he was able to forget momentarily the crisis at hand, moving on all fours up the dusty slope.

When he reached the top he took a long drink from his integrated hydration system, and looked out over the Crane Farm. The Drill for the Elevator anchor was barely visible, off to his right. Directly below was the Control Tower, and to his left the garage complex and storage sheds with the old Cranes. The garage door of Garage C where he'd been working on fueling one of the old Cranes was open a few inches at the bottom.

"Dang it! The microswitch 'door closed' indicator must have become obstructed again," he said. The switch was at the bottom of the door, and it tended to get dirty. The same thing had happened at A garage. Tom had alerted him to the problem, so he'd added the check to the Preventative Maintenance Program. However, he'd not kept up with the program like he should have, and this was the result. The switch, when dirty, would stop the door before it fully closed. As a result, a dust storm would fill the garage, ruining everything inside, the open electronics at least, completely.

Dirk, looking at the steeper side of the berm facing the Crane Farm thought, "I could take the path down to close it, but..." He examined the slope.

"I don't care if I fall – I deserve it," he thought, as he started down at a jog – he could crawl or run, he figured - might as well run.

Quickly he reached the bare edge of control – "This is more a controlled fall than a run," he said to himself, his feet sliding in the gravel with each step. "It's like a Games competition, jumping from post to post crossing a water hazard. Only here I won't get wet, only broken as I tumble down the slope into a heap of compound fractures, undiscovered until tomorrow when Radius reported for the next scheduled delivery – if they didn't delay the delivery to keep the airspace clear for the bigger delivery – the comet."

Dirk made a controlled crash into the back of the closest garage – he'd made it without incident. He felt a slight disappointment – he was hoping to punish himself in some non-fatal way. Opening the side door to the C garage, he pushed the "open" button on the main door. He usually opened it manually, but didn't feel like showing the power conservation sensibility right now, considering how much power was soon to be destructively expended on Tharsis Minutus.

The door opened. He turned the breaker for the garage power to the "off" position, and looked around for a screwdriver so he could remove and clean the microswitch.

"This was the last place I was working, so the tool bag must be in here," he said to himself, quickly getting angry. "Where is it!" he yelled out loud.

Suddenly he remembered his Mom always saying to "Think back to the last time you had it" advice he always found singularly unhelpful. In spite of himself however, he found himself doing it. "I left the garage and went to the control tower before heading home..." he thought as he manually closed the large garage door.

Walking out of Garage C, he looked toward Tharsis Minutus, the top of which was barely visible over the southern horizon: Olympus Mons loomed over all to the west, with the Three Sisters closer, their peaks looking minuscule compared to Olympus, but soaring heavenwards relative to the Crane Farm.

There were the tools – on the workbench on the ground level of the Control Tower. He grabbed the tool bag and headed back to Garage C.

Clearing the microswitch was a job of only a few minutes – it took longer to detach and reattach the switch than to actually clean out the grit. Tired, Dirk sat down in the driver's seat of the Crane. It was one he'd refueled and hoped to use for ground travel.

"I could take this out to Tharsis Minutus, loaded with camping gear, and set up a little base at the cave mouth to facilitate further exploration. That way I could stay out there overnight comfortably – but that is hopeless now."

Dirk had managed to avoid thinking about the impending disaster, but now the emotions associated with the comet, which he thought would have been so great - swimming on Mars! - were unimaginably horrific. He hit the steering wheel of the Crane in frustration.

"That never does any good" he recalled his dad saying after a long forgotten temper tantrum. "No it doesn't – didn't even make me feel better," he said to the Crane.

Dirk noticed that the refueling rig, or more precisely, the fuel transfer rig he'd put together out of spare hoses and other junk was still attached to the now empty Crane from which he'd taken the remaining fuel in order to top off the Land Crane.

"Radius would be mad to see that I didn't put that away properly," he said to himself, and began detaching the rig from the Crane.

"It only took one Crane to top off the other, so really, two Cranes equals one. I wonder how long I'll be able to spin the wheels on a full tank?"

He laughed – "Maybe Tom and I can race these babies."

Dirk went back outside, walked over to the control tower, and alternatively looking in the direction of Tharsis Minutus and overhead (at the path the inbound comet would take) felt an idea taking form.

Five minutes later, he ran into the Control Room and called Radius on the WiMAX – "Radius, Radius, get my dad, Tom, and Mandy and come to the Crane Farm! I've an idea on how to save the Martians!"

"This is Radius, roger over," said Radius immediately.

"This is Dirk – roger, hurry, out," Dirk responded and ran back to the garage.

# (60) Day 29 2300 (18 hours) The Idea

They arrived at the Crane Farm as Dirk was pushing a Crane to Garage C. Two Cranes were parked outside.

"The one on the right is full. We can push it to the landing zone, and attach the Cranes together there," Dirk yelled as he continued pushing the Crane into the garage.

"I'll start refueling this one," he said. "And ...."

"Hold on, Dirk, hold on," his dad said. "You're already executing a plan that you haven't shared with us - we have no idea what is going on."

"Yeah buddy," said Tom. "Take a deep breath and catch us up."

Dirk wiped the sweat off his face and said, "Ok, I can use a drink anyway. I'll show you in the Control Tower."

Once in the Tower Dirk walked over to the wall mounted tablet and began to draw.

"Local area exploration – that was my first objective. I figured, once these Cranes have delivered their load, they are trash. Especially since we are so close to Elevator installation, there is no future demand for these vehicles. I've been sticking them in the garages, because it seems such a waste to let the sand eat them into scrap, even though that is what the Company standard operating procedures direct."

"But they are out of fuel when they land," Tom pointed out, "And we don't have the fuel generation capability here to refuel them."

"That is half right," said Dirk. "Few of them are actually out of fuel upon landing. As you know, they are basically a directional braking system. For them to perform their function, they have to have enough fuel to decelerate the loads even in high wind conditions when they've been blown off course, or have to take a long descent because of an especially heavy load. As a result, they load them up with 'extra' fuel. This means that almost all Cranes contain leftover fuel in the tanks."

"And you developed a way to transfer fuel from Crane to Crane," explained Radius.

"Yes," said Dirk. "Initially I thought I could refuel the Cranes and use them to explore further and faster or even set up little base camps, such as for example at Tharsis Minutus."

A sad look passed over his face, but he quickly shook it off.

"But this is much more important. We will use the Cranes to adjust the comet's trajectory!"

He looked at each of them, waiting for a positive response. His dad was looking out the window at the landing zone, Mandy, holding T2, had her eyes closed. Tom was peering intently at Dirk's drawings.

His dad finally spoke up. "I like the idea Dirk, but I'm not sure of its effectiveness – the comet is a huge, dense ball of ice – that is why they harvested this particular one – it is not a loose snowball like most comets. One Crane is not going to be able to shift the vector sufficiently to generate trajectory change."

"I know," responded Dirk, "That is why we'll use several Cranes in a row, one after the other, to nudge the comet into a better path. We don't have to get it to go anywhere in particular, just not into Tharsis Minutus."

"And not into the City," said Mandy, opening her eyes.

"Yeah," Dirk agreed. He hadn't thought about that.

"There is another problem," his dad said. "You'll only be to able to affect the comet when it is almost at its destination – you can't control the Cranes when they are far away – the system is only designed to work for terminal guidance."

Dirk began to look worried. These were all issues he had failed to consider.

He turned to the drawing, yawned, and began looking for some solution.

Mandy had laid down on the bench again, and closed her eyes, still holding T2 who was starting to wiggle. Tom noticed and took him from her.

"Come on, little monkey," he said to T2. "Let's figure this out. Dirk is on to something, it just requires extra thrust."

Dirk walked over to the shelf for the water he had forgotten until now he needed. He sat down and drank the entire container, staring at the floor. The happiness he'd felt an hour ago had once again been replaced by despair. The fact that he was running on basically no sleep for almost an entire day helped neither his mood nor ability to think.

No one said anything for a few minutes. Dirk's adrenal based strength he'd used to move the Cranes and begin the refueling process faded into exhausted despair.

# (61) Day 30 0100 (17 hours) Tom Solves the Problem

"I love this plan, and I'm excited to be a part of it!" said T2 to Dirk, or rather, Tom holding T2 in front of his face and using a babyish voice.

"What?" said Dirk, without enthusiasm.

"We have to use multiple Cranes," said Tom.

"Yes, Tom, but I still don't think we have a sufficiently large time window to get the number of Cranes, at least four, up to the comet and affect its trajectory before the comet impacts Tharsis Minutus," said Mr. K.

"Not one at a time, true, so we'll have to do it all at once," said Tom, beginning to sketch out his idea on the board.

Dirk stood up and moved over to see better. "Dirk, can you please hold T2?" Tom asked. "I can draw better without holding him."

"Sure," said Dirk, taking T2 from Tom.

Tom drew a circle with eight dots forming a smaller circle inside it. He then drew a square using four of the dots, and then two lines from the corners making an x. He then shifted over to blank space and drew a 3D expanded view of the shape, showing it as a rectangular solid.

"We don't use one Crane at a time, we use two – and attach them at the wheels with this!" Tom said.

"When the wheels are locked in place, as they are for the normal delivery mode, they won't move at all, providing a stable anchor point for connection," Dirk said.

"Exactly," said Tom.

"But that only gives us two," said Mr. K.

Dirk stepped back, said "Hold on a minute," and ran out of the control tower.

"What do you think," Tom asked T2.

T2 smiled.

"Can you quickly manufacture the assemblies?" Mr. K asked Tom.

"No problem. I'll use the ship's 3D printer," Tom answered.

"What material will you use? The housing stock is far to weak."

"Ship emergency repair – we have barrels of the stuff, hull penetration quality. It will work," Tom answered confidently.

Dirk ran back in. "We can hook the Cranes together using the trailer hitch – they are tow capable. Once hooked together we can reinforce the lateral connection with another longer assembly on the outer wheels similar to the one Tom has designed for the interior wheels."

"Show me," said Tom. The three of them went back outside to examine the Cranes.

"Yes, Dirk," that will work, Tom agreed.

"But what about the shear forces on the four Cranes? Will the attachment assemblies you print be strong enough to keep it together?

"I can print pressure hull patches with integrated cosmic ray shielding – it's strong enough," said Tom.

"Ok," Mr. K said, "But Dirk, how are you going to control the four Cranes as a unit? You only have one channel for Crane communications."

"That's covered," Dirk said with a smile. "I'm going to Master and Slave the group. One Crane will be the Master (the one with the best control mother board) and I'll wire the Cranes to that control board so that each Crane acts as a single engine. As a result, I'll be able to control all four via the single channel."

After a minute of looking at the Crane, his dad had another question.

"Steering. How will you steer it?" his dad asked. "You much catch the comet before you can nudge it, and that is going to require some steering."

Dirk had an answer for that too. "I've worked out the energy maneuverability for one Crane as part of my job – the Cranes are basically braking systems – so to get the deliveries down safely, and on target, you have to trade altitude for horizontal movement by selectively firing each of the engines. By changing the descent vector inclination, it is possible to steer the Crane down. It will be more complicated with four Cranes acting as one, with the play in the connection between them, but our problem is actually simpler than a delivery – we want to get the comet off its current target – we don't have to place it precisely onto another one. So a nudge will do."

Mr. K and Tom considered what Dirk had said for a moment. His dad looked up from the ground where he'd been idly making circles in the dust with a pen. "I think it will work – you've really thought this through. Tom, how long will it take you to print the parts?"

Tom thought for a moment. "2 hours for each assembly," he said, "Give or take 30 minutes. We have to include the transportation time to get them back here from the ship. So at least 9 hours."

T2, who had been very good so far, started to fuss. Dirk put him on the top of the Crane so he could practice standing as Dirk continued to hold him.

Radius had joined the group and Mr. K now turned to him. "Radius, do you know how to refuel the Cranes?"

"Yes, I've helped Dirk with it before," Radius answered.

"Outstanding," said Mr. K. "Tom, do you think T2 is ready to go to sleep?"

"He sure is – it is way past his bedtime."

"How about this then for a plan – Dirk takes T2 back to your house, and the two them get some rack time. Dirk can sleep on the couch in T2's room, so he is there if T2 wakes up. You and Mandy head to the ship and start printing. You have a place to sleep there, right?"

"Yes," Tom replied. "Mandy and I can trade off taking naps while the printer is working. He smiled at T2 – "We are used to not getting much sleep, right son?"

T2 laughed and nodded in agreement with his dad.

"But Dad, I don't want to sleep – we have too much to do," Dirk said.

"I'm not suggesting you get some rest because you have nothing to do – I'm suggesting you get some rest because you have work to do. Rewiring and flying this MegaCrane can't be done effectively with you brain dead from fatigue. Sleep will dramatically increase your proficiency with the soldering iron and Crane controls."

"I like it – let's run it by the wife," Tom said.

"Mandy is asleep," Radius said.

"Ok," Tom said. "Let's get started without her. Radius, tell her the plan please when she wakes up. I'll get T2 and Dirk settled at home and then head to the ship to start printing. Let me take some measurements, Dirk, and we'll get started."

"Hey Tom, if its ok with you, I'll head home, shower and grab some clean clothes and meet you at your house," Dirk said.

"Sounds good," said Tom.

"How long does the refueling, or more precisely, fuel transfer process take, Dirk?" Mr. K asked.

"Once the pumping starts, about 30 minutes. I had to jury rig the pump assembly, so it is not very efficient – but I never worried about the speed of the transfer before."

"That is manageable. Radius and I will get the Crane's fueled and then head over to help with the printing. Agreed?"

"Roger," said Tom.

"Sounds good, Dad," said Dirk.

"Are we missing anything, Radius?" Mr. K asked.

"Not that I can see now," said Radius.

"All right then, break!"

# (62) Day 30 0900 (7 hours) An Unwelcome Call from City Hall

"Dirk, Dirk, wake up," said Radius softly. "You have to go to City Hall – medical."

It took a minute for Dirk to register where he was – on Tom and Mandy's couch in T2's room.

"What?" he said. "Why didn't they call me?"

"They did," Radius said, "But you left your communicator in your pants pocket in the other room so it wouldn't disturb T2. They called me to find you."

Dirk sat up on the couch, and rubbed his face. "Let me hit the head and brush my teeth."

He stood up groggily. He'd only had 6 hours of sleep – a sizable amount, but not enough to recover fully from the last two days.

"Is T2 still asleep?" Dirk asked.

Radius walked silently over to T2's crib – he turned toward Dirk and nodded, "Yes."

Radius watched T2 roll over, open his eyes halfway, and continue sleeping.

Dirk returned after a few minutes. "We can't leave him here. What time do we have to be at City Hall?"

"The Sergeant said 'immediately'. He was very angry. I don't know why. How could you be expected to report there at any moment? I propose we get your father."

"Yeah, where is he?"

"He is still down at the Crane Farm, doing some additional work on the engines, cleaning them I believe to ensure maximum thrust at the key moment."

Dirk, still half asleep and distracted by the Governmental summons, had forgotten for a moment that they were engaged in responding to a crisis more significant than the Sergeant could generate.

"Umm. I don't want to interrupt him – I should have thought of that. Let's go, and we can head over the ship directly from City Hall. T2 will be glad to see his parents anyway. I'll grab him some snacks, then we'll carry him over. Hopefully he'll stay asleep."

"Where are your weighted clothes?" Radius asked.

"Oh man," said Dirk. "I left them at home last night, since I was coming over here to sleep anyway. We'll have to stop at home first."

"How about you run home now, get dressed. I'll put the snacks together for T2, and so when you get back we can go straight to City Hall. This house is closer to City Hall anyway. No sense in dragging T2 to your house and then right past this one to get to City Hall and the ship."

"Great idea – thanks Radius. Ok, see you in 5 minutes – or so."

"Very well," said Radius, heading for the kitchen after looking at T2 again to verify that he remained asleep.

They walked into City Hall to find the Sergeant waiting angrily. About to launch into a tirade he restrained himself when he saw T2 asleep in Dirk's arms. Radius pushed the empty stroller in front of him. T2 had started to fuss when they'd tried to put him in the stroller, so Dirk carried him, which kept T2 happily asleep.

"Good morning," Dirk whispered. "Why did you call me here? I have to get to work."

"There are no deliveries scheduled for today," the Sergeant said.

"But I have other things to do at the Crane Farm."

"You can do them after this. Come into my office."

Dirk looked at Radius, who shrugged. They followed the Sergeant.

"Sit down, Dirk," the Sergeant said. "Put the baby in the stroller."

"He might wake up," Dirk said. "I'll hold him."

"Suit yourself," the Sergeant said, "But I require access to your arms."

"Why?" said Dirk, trying to keep his voice low to avoid disturbing T2.

"We must take blood for testing," the Sergeant said.

"But why? My dad has to be here before any medical procedures take place."

The Sergeant was not pleased to hear this. "That is unsatisfactory. I'm getting the Director." He walked behind his desk and pushed the button to talk to the Director.

"What?" she snapped.

"Director, I'm here with the Kamehameha boy. He is uncooperative."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said, in an unctuous voice. "I'll be right down to explain things to him. Thank you for bringing me in on this important meeting."

Radius took the opportunity provided by the Sergeant sitting at his desk to whisper to Dirk. "Dirk, your dad is working on the engines. Do you really need him here?"

"Yes," Dirk whispered back. "They have no right to take blood from me, no matter what they say. Dad was very clear that I should not provide any blood again, and that if they called me here to contact him immediately. If I wasn't so tired I would have called him right after you woke me up."

Radius held back his response as the Director walked in.

"Good morning!" she said cheerfully. "And who is this?" she asked, stooping down slightly to peer awkwardly at T2.

"It's Tom and Mandy's son – I'm babysitting him, and must to get him back home as soon as possible. Why am I here?" Dirk asked.

"Well, well," the Director said. Both Dirk and Radius noticed her quick glare at the Sergeant as she considered what she was going to say.

"Dirk, additional blood samples are necessary. It will only take a few minutes. Sergeant, please begin. I'm sure Dirk will cooperate now," she said with a smile.

"Yes ma'am," said the Sergeant, as he grabbed two of the vacuum flasks. As he picked them up from his desk drawer, they hit one another, and the bell sound that Dirk had noticed during the retrieval rang through the room.

Dirk forced himself to not look at Radius, afraid the glance would reveal that they knew how the bottles had gotten there.

"No," Dirk said, standing up. "I'm waiting for my dad. I'll go outside and call him now."

The smile disappeared from the Director's mouth and she narrowed her eyes.

She looked at the Sergeant, more to think of her next step than from any desire to communicate with him.

She turned back to Dirk, Radius and the still sleeping T2. "Ok, Sergeant, please take the little guy, what is his name again? Three-two? Strange name for a child. We will take a sample from him."

Dirk stood up, and started to back out the door as the Sergeant approached.

"Hand him over," the Sergeant said, reaching out his arms for T2. As he did, Radius grasped the Sergeant's right forearm – the pain caused the Sergeant to immediately lean toward his right side. He grabbed desperately at Radius' hand.

"Ow, let me go immediately!" he said.

"Release him now or I will have you destroyed!" said the Director.

"The baby will not be touched," Radius said, continuing to hold the Sergeant's arm.

"Oh fine," said the Director, shaking her head dismissively. "But we must get a sample from Dirk then."

Radius released the Sergeant, who rubbed his arm, glaring at Radius. He walked back to his desk and picked up a flask.

"Give the Robot the baby and stick out your right arm. Sit down first, then give me your arm," he said.

"Is it worth taking Dad away from the engines to fight this now? I'll make more blood," Dirk thought. He looked at Radius, but Radius didn't say anything. "We don't have time to waste with this," Dirk thought

"Ok, I'll do it," he said, and carefully transferred T2 to Radius' arms. T2 mumbled a little, but didn't wake up.

Dirk sat down, and the Sergeant realized Dirk had to take off the top part of his suit to give the blood.

The Director noticed it at the same time. "I'll leave you your privacy – Sergeant, contact me immediately if there are any other issues."

Dirk stood up again, took off his heavy tunic and removed the top of his sweatsuit.

The Sergeant reviewed the flask instructions. He put the flask on the arm of Dirk's chair and went to his desk to get gloves. He put them on awkwardly and read the instruction sheet again.

"Ok, make a fist," he said.

Dirk complied.

"Release it, and then pump it a little," said the Sergeant, looking closely at the veins at Dirk's elbow.

Removing the safety cover from the top of the vacuum flask revealed a long needle. He grasped Dirk's arm awkwardly and stuck the needle in Dirk's arm.

"Ouch!" Dirk said. "That hurts, a lot! Have you been trained on this?"

"I watched a video," said the Sergeant. "Be quiet and don't move – it will hurt more if you do."

Dirk quickly felt light headed, and as if his arm was being sucked into the flask. The vacuum pulled his blood out – it was calibrated such that it sucked at the same rate as his blood flowed, so that it didn't cause the artery to collapse, but it felt to Dirk as though it was sucking out all his guts, not only blood.

The Sergeant took the full flask and put it on his desk. Dirk put his head in hands, the room spinning around him. The Sergeant grabbed another vacuum flask and holding it down beside his left leg to hide it from Radius, who was looking intently (worriedly one would say if his face could make such an expression) at Dirk.

"Are you feeling ok?" the Sergeant asked solicitously, while simultaneously grabbing Dirk's left arm and inserting the needle.

"Hey!" Dirk said weakly. "You already have the sample."

"That was the first one – you agreed to this, or should I use this one on the baby?"

It was an empty threat, (he knew he couldn't get to T2 through Radius) but it was enough to get Dirk to acquiesce, which is all the Sergeant needed.

"But wait!" said Radius.

"Ok, ok, it's ok Radius," Dirk said, laying his head back in the chair. He was pale and sweaty.

Unwilling to put T2 down, Radius stood there.

It only took a couple of minutes – the Sergeant took the full flask back to his desk and was suddenly quite pleasant.

"Thank you very much for your cooperation, Dirk. Have a nice day," he said.

Dirk winced as he lifted himself to a standing position. He put his sweatsuit and weighted tunic back on and stood. Resting his weight on the stroller, he walked slowly out of the office and down the hall. Radius followed with T2 in his arms.

Once outside Dirk leaned against the wall. "Radius, I can't walk much further. You think T2 would mind if I used his stroller," he said not looking up, with a weak laugh.

"Hold on," Radius said. "T2 is awake."

"Good morning, T2" Radius said. "I'm going to put you in your stroller now, and we'll go to the ship to see your Mom and Dad."

T2 looked at him, still half asleep, but didn't fuss when put into the stroller. Radius walked over to Dirk and pulled Dirk's left arm over his own shoulder to help him walk.

"I'm ok, I'm ok," said Dirk weakly, trying to stand. He took a step and collapsed.

Radius swept him up in his arms.

"Dirk, can you drag the stroller?"

"Uh, ok," Dirk responded, sounding as if he was no more awake than T2.

Radius maneuvered so that Dirk could grab one of the stroller handles with his right hand, and Radius began walking, carrying Dirk who was pulling the stroller by one handle. The stroller swayed side to side as they walked. T2 faced backwards, but didn't seem to mind. At least, he wasn't making any noise about it.

"Radius," Dirk said quietly.

"Yes, Dirk."

"Looks like you broke the first Law of Robotics back there. But I'm glad you did," Dirk said.

"Bent, not broke" Radius replied. Dirk couldn't see his face, but it sounded like Radius was smiling.

# (63) Day 30 1015 (5 hours 45 minutes) Dirk, Radius and T2 arrive at the Ship

"Dirk, I'm going to put you down here," Radius said, lowering him to ground at the base of the ship's brow.

"T2, time to go up into the ship and see Mom and Dad," Radius said as he deftly removed T2 from the stroller and walked up the steps into the ship.

He paused after getting up a few steps. "Dirk, I'll be back to get you as soon as I turn T2 over to his parents. You ok?"

"Yeah," Dirk said weakly, his face sickly pale, hair damp with sweat.

Radius walked quickly, but carefully, up the stairs into the ship. He paused for a moment, called up the ship's plan from memory, and turned right and then right again to head back toward the ship's stern and the cargo bay. The main hull repair equipment was located in the bay so it could be easily taken out of the ship and put into place if necessary. He wasn't sure, but it seemed likely the 3D printer Tom had discussed would be there.

The main passageway had larger than normal hatches, to allow for equipment movement into the ship, and he had no trouble transiting the doors holding T2. He quickly reached the cargo bay, and the sound of the printer sliding back and forth confirmed the validity of his destination choice.

Mandy was sleeping on a cot next to the printer, but woke up as Radius entered the space.

"Hi, Radius. Hello, baby," she said, getting up quickly. "Where is Dirk?" she asked, reaching out her arms to take the happy to see his Mom T2.

"He's outside. I'll go get him," said Radius.

"Ok, we have the first two assemblies printed," she said, smiling at T2 but pointing to the printer.

"That is good," said Radius as he turned and walked out of the cargo bay, anxious to retrieve Dirk.

Radius picked up Dirk with no more effort than he had expended on T2 – his disaster response heritage was evident in the ease with which he carried Dirk up the stairs to sick bay.

"The door is locked, Dirk. I'm going to put you down and get Tom who must have the keys. I'll be back in a few minutes. We'll have you rehydrated and comfortable soon," Radius said, placing Dirk on the deck.

Although Radius had put Dirk in a sitting position against the bulkhead, Dirk immediately lay down on his side, unable to keep himself upright.

"Ok, Radius, I'm fine, really," he said softly.

Radius returned to the cargo bay, where Mandy was sitting on the cot playing with a now wide awake T2.

"Sick bay is locked," Radius said. "Do you have the code?"

"Why do are you asking about sick bay?" Mandy asked, looking up from T2. "Is Dirk ok?"

"No, he needs rehydration. The Sergeant took an excessive amount of blood from him."

"What!" Mandy exclaimed. "Why? You can tell me on the way. Tom is asleep in his stateroom. I'll get him. We'll meet you at sickbay." She slipped on her shoes and strode quickly ahead of him, T2 on her hip toward the bow. Radius returned to sickbay.

After a minute he heard the door unlock and slide open. He put Dirk on the first patient table. Accessing his trauma medicine files, he quickly grabbed an IV bag of synthetic blood, and gave Dirk a couple of packs of nutrient gel to eat and a water bottle to sip.

"Hey Dirk, I'm going to take off the top part of your suit, to access your arms, ok."

"Sure, fine," Dirk said.

Radius undid the top of Dirk's suit. Hanging the synthetic blood bag he gently inserted the IV into Dirk's arm.

Exhausted, Dirk didn't even flinch when the needle penetrated his vein, below where the Sergeant had extracted the blood.

"Here Dirk, have some water," Radius said, holding the water container up to his lips.

Dirk took a sip and then lay back.

"Have more," Radius said.

Dirk finished a longer drink as Tom, Mandy and T2 rushed into the room.

"What happened!" Mandy asked, taking the water container from Radius and handing him T2.

"They took blood with vacuum containers that arrived a couple of days ago in a Diplo pouch." It seemed like a month ago to Dirk as he said it.

"Why would they take blood?" Tom said. "No one has given blood for almost 70 years, since the optimization of synthetic plasmas and other blood products."

"I don't know," Dirk said softly.

"Radius, do you have any idea? Did they explain themselves? Why did you allow it?" Mandy shot at him.

"We wanted to wait for Mr. K, but were sensitive about the time – we didn't want to take him away from the refueling," Radius explained.

Dirk drank again. His color was already looking better, and the blood bag was half empty.

Tom took a blanket from the closet and put it over Dirk, being careful not to jostle his arm.

"Thanks," Dirk said.

"That's not right," Tom said. "We must notify the Company Directors," Tom said.

"Yeah," Dirk agreed. "And if I didn't agree they were going to take the blood from T2."

Mandy, frightened now, looked at Tom.

Dirk saw her expression, and gave a weak laugh, which sound more like a cough. "Don't worry, Radius 'bent' the First Law as soon as the Sergeant reached for T2. I thought he was going to crush the Sergeants arm, or rip it off. The Sergeant almost collapsed from the pain and gave up on his T2 plan."

Mandy put the water container down and took T2 from Radius. T2 in her left arm, she gave Radius a hug with her right. "Thanks, Radius."

"My pleasure," said Radius.

"I've been wondering about that though," said Dirk. "By rights they should have reported it and had you destroyed immediately, not threaten to obliterate you."

Radius didn't say anything.

"That is very strange," Mandy said. "I mean I'm glad they didn't of course, but that doesn't make any sense."

"It does if they knew they were doing something illegal and didn't want any off planet attention. The limited prosecuton of Dirk for trespassing, not theft is odd. They are up to something and are willing to overlook minor and indeed major infractions in order to protect themselves," Tom said.

Mandy looked at Dirk, who had stopped sweating and regained most of his normal color, but still looked less than healthy.

"Dirk, you should get some sleep," she said.

Dirk tried to sit up. "But we have to get the MegaCrane assembled. The control system hasn't been rewired yet."

"Tell you what," said Tom. "We still have two more hours of printing to do. You sleep until the printing is done, and then we'll take the parts down to the Crane Farm and begin assembling."

"Ok," said Dirk. He was too exhausted to dispute the appropriateness of Tom's plan.

Mandy tucked him in as Radius removed the IV from his arm and put the healing gel on his punctures – they would be completely healed by the time Dirk awoke.

"Dirk, choke down this meal gel and drink at least half of this water," Radius said. "Then you can sleep."

Dirk sucked the gel tube dry and drank the water. "Thanks, guys," he said, closing his eyes. "Can you please lower me down flat on this thing?"

Radius hit the button and the bed flattened. Tom raised the right side rails while Radius raised the left.

"See you in a couple of hours, Dirk," Tom said, dimming the lights.

"Ok," Dirk replied, his eyes shut.

The four of them left Dirk and walked down the passageway for a few steps before Tom stopped.

"Radius, while we finish up the printing would you be willing to go back to the Crane Farm and get one of the Cranes that Dirk modified for land use and bring it back here? These parts are pretty heavy."

"Certainly," said Radius. "I'll leave now. Is there anything I can take down there with me?"

Tom thought for a few seconds. "If you take one of the wheel attachment assemblies down, you can OPTEST it in order to ensure we didn't mismeasure or screw up in some other way. We can plan for the anticipated problems, but the unknown unknowns that we don't prepare for could be fatal. We have to test as much as possible to tease those gremlins out early."

They continued to the cargo bay. Radius went directly to the printer, and picked up the two tire shaped hemispheres joined in the middle by fat Xs that made up the first Crane union assembly. The hemispheres 'hugged' the tires, and thus distributed the torque to the rubber of the wheels first. Longer screws through the X's that attached to the wheel lug nuts provided additional strength.

"They are about 500 Earth pounds each," said Mandy.

"No problem," said Radius, picking one up. "Do you have any chain or rope I could use for handles – it is a long walk."

"Sure," said Mandy. "You can use these cargo tie downs."

"Thank you," said Radius, attaching the tie downs to two of the attachment assemblies. With one in each hand he started off. He stopped at the door and turned.

"Are any of the connectors printed yet?" he asked.

"Yes," said Tom. "I have them printing out on the small printer in the machine shop. I'll get you eight so you can optest them." He ran into a space just off the cargo bay and returned with a bag of the new bolts. He put the bag over Radius' head and across his shoulder.

"Comfortable?" he asked.

"Indeed," said Radius, and resumed his walk to the Crane Farm.

# (64) Day 30 1212 (3 Hours 45 minutes) Dirk Restored

It took Dirk a minute to realize where he was, but he knew he desperately required a restroom. Unable to figure out in the dim soft light how to lower the rails hemming him in, he slid out at the bottom of the bed and hit the head, relieved.

"Those nutrition gels have the right stuff – wish I'd been eating them while I was competing in the Games," he thought as he realized the debilitating weakness he'd felt after the bleeding was gone, and his muscles responded to movement commands. "Normal energy levels coursing through my body – good. Some more food and a long drink of water and I'll hit 100%," Dirk said to himself.

Heading aft out of sickbay a wave of dizziness that forced him to lean against the bulkhead reminded that he was not at 100% yet. He walked more slowly after that, keeping a hand against the side of the passageway as he made his way to the cargo bay.

Tom and Mandy, lifting the second external connector off the printer, didn't notice him immediately as he walked in.

"Hey, Dirk," said Tom, as he and Mandy placed the assembly on the deck, "How are you feeling?"

"Great!" said Dirk. "A little whoozy occasionally, but almost 100%. Do you have anything else to eat here?"

"His appetite is back, that's a good sign," said Mandy with a smile. "Yes, there is a small food unit here, so we can zap up whatever you like. The ship still has plenty of food."

"I didn't know the ship had any food left on it," Dirk said.

"Yes, I don't publicize it, but the ship is equipped with sufficient emergency stores to last the entire population 18 months. That is plenty of time for a rescue ship to get here if we had a catastrophic failure of our habitation systems."

"Good to know," said Dirk. "I'm going to eat more than my fair share now."

"You'll earn it," said Tom.

As Dirk finished his Kailua pork and poi, Radius walked in.

"Optest complete, optest sat," said Radius. "Or as much of an optest as I could do. The assembly fit, and based on the torque measurements I was able to do will suffice for at least the time we require."

"Excellent," said Tom.

"Hi, Radius," said Dirk. "Thanks for getting me up here. I think T2 could have crawled here faster than I could without your help."

"My pleasure," said Radius. "You are feeling normal?"

"Yes, I feel fantastic, especially after all this food. But we are burning daylight. What is the status down at the Crane Farm?"

"The first two connection assemblies are installed," Radius said.

"What about the refueling?" Dirk asked.

"We have refueled 6 Cranes, the ones that looked best to your dad and I, in case one of the Cranes proves unsuitable. We still have 8 partially filled Cranes from which we can extract additional fuel if necessary. Your dad is sleeping now. We should bring him some food."

"Oh yeah, he must be starving!" Dirk said. "Did you tell him about our encounter with the Sergeant?"

"No," Radius said. "I saw no reason to distract him. I believe the comet is our primary focus now."

"Good point," said Dirk.

"Yes," said Tom, "I think that was very wise Radius. We'll have time enough to deal with our friendly Government representatives - who are of course only to here to 'help' - after we knock that comet away from Tharsis Minutus."

"Whoo hoo!" yelled Dirk, as he drove out of town with the first two interior assemblies strapped down to the Crane in a precarious pile held together with tie downs and duct tape. Tom and Radius clung to the sides.

"Dirk, this was a great investment of effort, to figure out how to get these things running in a land mode," Tom said.

"It wasn't hard," said Dirk. "I had to do some minor reprogramming, but they were designed for dual use – just not dual use here. These are the same models used for asteroid mining. The ore pulling cargo attachments are designed so that they cover almost the entire Crane, keeping it pressed down onto the surface to prevent roll-overs when transiting slopes. They drive on the surface before launching back up to the processing vessels. Modifying the programming using existing code modules to make them drive here was all that was required."

The 20 minute walk reduced to a five minute drive. Quickly, they unloaded the interior connection assemblies and headed back to retrieve those for the exterior.

# (65) Day 30 1300 (3 hours 15 minutes) Mod Delivery

"All yours!" yelled Dirk from the open cargo bay door, as he felt the line with which he had lowered the large exterior connector go slack.

"Yeah, it is on the Crane," Tom yelled back. "Radius is on his way up to help you load the next one."

"Roger," said Dirk as he pulled the line back up.

"One down, one to go," said Dirk as Radius walked into the cargo bay.

They attached the line to the remaining unit and Radius held it over the edge of the door as Dirk braced himself in a squat and began lowering. As soon as it cleared the hull of the ship and was swinging clear Radius grabbed the line to help Dirk lower it down.

"Hold!" Tom yelled. They stopped lowering, waiting for Tom's "Go!"

"Go, three feet or so," Tom said and they softly placed the long assembly onto the Crane.

"Let's roll," Tom yelled up, climbing into the driver's seat. Dirk stuck his head out of the bay. "Hey, I get to drive!"

"You snooze, you lose!" Tom said laughing.

As they topped the berm on the City side of the Crane Farm, the Crane halted.

"Why are you stopping?" Dirk asked, from his precarious perch on the passenger side of the Crane.

"I don't know," said Tom, looking at the dashboard.

Dirk dismounted and walked over to stare at the dashboard with Tom.

"You're out of gas, buddy."

"Ouch," said Tom.

"I told you, you should let me drive," Dirk said.

"Um...." said Tom.

"Just kidding -we are out of gas. No help for it – carrying the attachment load and the three of us burned up the fuel. If we really want to use these things to do any real work we're going to have to add more fuel capacity."

"But that is something we can worry about after our current task is completed," said Radius.

"Agreed," said Dirk, who in his enjoyment of the Crane ride had momentarily forgotten the seriousness of their situation. "Is there another Land Crane refueled?" Dirk asked Radius.

"Yes, but it will take more time to get the Land Crane, drive it here, reload and deliver the assemblies than simply carrying them ourselves," Radius replied.

Dirk started untying the connector assemblies. "Ok, we'll carry them from here," he said.

"Roger that," said Tom, starting to untie the other end.

"Radius," Tom said, "Can you carry one end by yourself?"

"Certainly," Radius said.

"Ok then, Dirk and I will take the front and Radius you can take the back." They lifted the assembly from the Crane to the ground, and then with a "1, 2, 3" picked it up and continued on to the Crane Farm where the Cranes Mr. K had refueled were waiting.

"One more to go," said Dirk.

"You have the energy to get the final load, or should we get your dad?" Tom asked.

"No worries – I'm feeling great," Dirk said.

"Ok, let's go."

As they jogged back to get the other assembly Dirk suddenly realized not only was he not depressed, he was actually happier than he could remember being in a long, long time, certainly since arriving on Mars.

"Given the circumstances happiness certainly doesn't make any sense," he said to himself. "But I'll have to figure this out later – right now I've got to get these Cranes together and airborne to knock that dirty snowball away from Tharsis Minutus."

# (66) Day 30 1315 (2 hours 45 Minutes) Crane Combination and New Challenges

As they put the last connector down next to the four Cranes, Mr. K walked out of the Control Tower.

"Radius and I pushed them together, and we have the wheels locked on the first two, which have been secured by the connectors," he said, walking up to the group as Dirk was peering intently at the connectors.

"It looks great, thanks, Dad," said Dirk. "Let's get the other two into position. Then if you guys can attach them together I'll start wiring them up as a single unit."

"Ok," said Tom as he and Radius began pushing the other two Cranes into position.

"How are you feeling?" said Mr. K to Dirk quietly.

At first Dirk thought that he was referring the blood "donation". "Did Mandy or Tom tell him about it?" he wondered.

"Uh, ok, nervous about getting these Cranes to work as a single unit."

"I'm sure you'll be able to do it. You've been messing around with these Cranes enough. Let me know if I can help," his dad said.

"Dad, have you slept at all?" Dirk asked.

"Yes, after Radius and I moved the Cranes there was nothing left to do down here, so I racked out in the control chair. How about you?"

"Yeah, I slept plenty actually. I'm not sure who fell asleep faster, T2 or I. I was afraid I'd be too nervous to sleep, but that turned out not to be a problem," he said with a wry grin.

"I'm glad you rested – you need to be sharp to get all this done."

"Speaking of which," Dirk said, "Is my electronics tool kit in the Tower?"

"No, it's in the garage. Want me to get it?" his dad asked.

"Thanks, that's ok. I have to go to the garage anyway to get the gear required for removing and reattaching the master motherboard. I'm going to program each Crane to act as a single unit (not 8 separate engines) with the control module from another Crane serving as the master control. It will read each Crane as a single engine rocket and fire them as necessary to both gain the required altitude and stay on course."

"Ok, then, I'll help Tom and Radius get these Cranes together."

"Thanks, Dad. I'll be back in a few. I'm going to load the programs on the Book and then feed them into each of the Cranes here."

Dirk quickly scanned his workbench as he walked into the garage. He saw the test cables laying in a heap where he'd last used them to do the conversion on the Crane for land use. "I probably should have put those away more carefully," he said to himself as he plugged his Book into the diagnostic test unit on the workbench, pulled up the control program for the Cranes, copied it, and began modifications.

"Keep it simple," he told himself as he scanned through the code. "I'll integrate the rocket engines so they act as a single unit. I'll put the entire propulsion system into a unified subroutine. Then I can use the normal control program to manage each of the Cranes as if it was directing a single engine on an individual crane."

He wrote the necessary lines and ran a couple of simulations using the Book as a test platform.

"Success!" he said out loud, and then realized his sense of accomplishment was more than a little premature – the program modification was the easy part. The actual wiring of the Cranes together and making them function as a single unit constituted the bulk of the challenge, and was something he'd never done before. He'd hacked individual Cranes but that was a orders of magnitude easier - a complicated problem, not a complex one.

And he only had two hours left in which to do it.

Dirk removed the control unit from the nearest Crane and jacked it into the test unit in order to load the program into its flash memory. He deleted the existing program, verified the root drive contained only the new program and that the routing was correct on startup. "That's all I need – not!" he said to himself. "The motherboard looking for the old program because I didn't modify the directory."

He double checked the directory and then quickly gathered up all the connection cables he could find. Although only four were required, he brought all of them in case one had a fault, a fairly likely eventuality considering the Cranes had not only experienced a difficult descent through the Martian atmosphere, but had been exposed to the elements for months before Dirk arrived and began his salvage/modification activities.

Tom and Radius were tightening the last bolt on the Cranes when he arrived.

"To get these any tighter we'd have to weld them together," said Tom.

"The play in the connections is actually good – too brittle and it could break up on launch," Radius said.

"Sweet!" responded Dirk. "Then I need to wire these up," holding up the mess of cables.

Tom laughed. "How about I untangle that mess while you get started."

"Thanks," said Dirk.

Mr. K walked up.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hey guys, I was thinking," Mr. K said, acknowledging Dirk's greeting with a smile. "Should we shield the Cranes somehow from the coma, the envelope of burning gas and steam that surrounds the comet?"

Dirk looked at his dad with a suddenly sad expression.

"I should have thought of that!" he said. "The control circuitry I'm modifying will melt before we get close enough to the comet to affect its trajectory."

"Exactly," said his dad. "But I think I have a solution that will satisfice. The packages are wrapped in a protective fabric, right?"

"Yes," Radius said.

"We'll wrap the top of the Cranes in the fabric, leaving openings for the rocket engine exhaust," Mr. K said.

Dirk thought for a moment. "That will work," he said. "It will add some weight, but not a significant amount." He smiled, relieved. "Nice catch, Dad!"

Mr. K smiled. "I'm glad I thought of it now, and not as the MegaCrane falls out of the sky after the coma fries its electronic control systems."

"I'll collect the blankets," Radius said and headed off to the 'junk pile' behind the largest garage where they kept the extra stuff that they had so far failed to find a use for.

Dirk climbed onto the MegaCrane and began removing the covers to the electronic controls.

"Can I help with that?" Tom asked.

"Sure," said Dirk. "Open up each of the controls so I can wire them together. I'm using this one as the control unit. Let's refer to them as Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta, moving clockwise."

As Dirk began fiddling around with Alpha, Tom and Mr. K removed the covers from the other three Cranes, placing them back on loosely to keep out the dust.

Mr. K handed the screws to Dirk who carefully placed the screws in his zippered chest pocket.

"Thanks, Dad," Dirk said absently. "And Tom. But there is a problem – I can't see a way to connect multiple Cranes – there are not enough ports."

"What do you mean?" said Tom.

"The processor sends a control signal to each of the engines for steering purposes. For example, it will add more thrust to the right engines if it is falling too fast on that side, or conversely, reduce the thrust if the reentry turbulence is causing the Crane to heel over too far to the right. Since it is fundamentally a braking system, that is all the steering it can do."

"Yes," said Mr. K. "That is what we expected. We only to have shift the comet's trajectory – just about any change will suit our purposes."

"Yeah," agreed Dirk, "But the problem is that the rocket controls are hard wired, and there is only one open port, the test port. I thought there were going to be multiple extra ports. I was going to program each Crane to act as a single unit, including this one, and then port the Bravo, Charlie and Delta into Alpha, replacing the individual rocket inputs from Alpha with the inputs from Bravo, Charlie and Delta."

"So you can't attach the other Cranes," finished Tom.

"Precisely," said Dirk. "And I don't have any ideas on how to work around it, and we don't have time!" Dirk's positive mood had entirely evaporated.

"Let's go into the Control Tower," said Mr. K, "and look at this on the white board."

"We're out of time!" Dirk exclaimed.

"We have time. Remember what Abraham Lincoln said. 'Give me six hours to cut down a tree and I'll spend the first four sharpening the ax.' In time compressed situations effective prior planning is even more critical," his dad said, heading for the Tower.

"Come on, Dirk," Tom said. "We'll figure it out."

They passed Radius, who was loaded down with hastily folded blankets, as they walked to the tower. Tom filled him in on the problem.

"I'll drop the blankets off and join you in 6.4 minutes," Radius responded.

Mr. K turned on the white board and had already started sketching by the time Tom and Dirk walked in.

"Dirk, you should grab another water," his dad said.

"I'll take one too," Tom said to Dirk. "And get one for your dad."

Dirk grunted in response and mumbled, "We are wasting time here."

Mr. K ignored the mumbling and continued sketching. He drew four rectangles, one in each of the corners of the screen, to represent the component Cranes of the MegaCrane and a question mark in the middle.

"Our task: figure out how to connect the four Cranes to act as a single unit. So what is the root of the problem we face now?" he asked the group as Radius walked in.

"There is not a quick way to link the other three units to the Master unit, Alpha. I could rewire them, but that requires more time than we have," Dirk said dejectedly.

"So what is the problem formulation?" his dad asked again. "And what is the root cause of the problem? We must have perfect clarity on the nature of the problem we are trying to solve."

They all thought for a minute, though Dirk's thoughts were less than productive. "This is a waste of time," ran through his mind like a mantra.

Tom spoke up. "To function, the MegaCrane requires a router that will send the appropriate signals to the engines on each of the Cranes."

"Yes," agreed Mr. K, waiting for more.

"Integrating a router into the control system in order to shift the comet Water Balloon's trajectory with the MegaCrane, is essential," Radius said.

"An elegant formulation," Mr. K smiled, and wrote it on the board.

Tom approached the board. "What possibilities exist for a router? What can we use as a router or tweak to create the same functionality? Shout it out if you think of anything. Dirk, are there any other parts on the rockets that we can use, maybe in the wheel control system?"

Distracted from his mantra by Tom's question, Dirk shifted his thoughts to more productive activities, at least for that instant.

He visualized the wheel control system. "They are all individually electric motor driven. There is a control system, speeding up and slowing down individual wheels for turns and increasing traction, but it is integrated into the main control – it is all done through software, so there isn't any hardware that we can repurpose."

"Tom," Mr. K said, "Is there anything on the Ship we could use?"

Tom thought for a moment, and began writing down the names of equipment and systems on the Ship as a way to stimulate his memory.

"Or maybe a pump controller in the greenhouse?" Mr. K suggested.

"Yeah, maybe, hold on," said Tom, thinking.

Dirk stood up and wandered aimlessly around the Control Room, examining the Crane schematics in his mind's eye. He'd messed around with the Cranes so much he didn't need to check the Book. "But maybe I should check the Book," Dirk thought. "Maybe I'm overlooking something."

"I'm going to get the Book from the garage," Dirk said, walking out.

"Ok," said his dad. Tom and Radius were too deep in contemplation of the problem to bother answering.

Dirk looked up, wondering if the comet was visible. He didn't see the comet, but far to the West saw a bright spot in the sky. "Is that it? Is it so close already?"

He sped up, entered the garage, and grabbed the Book off the workbench.

As he walked back to the Control Tower it hit him – the solution. The only solution that would work in the time they had available – but he couldn't even suggest it.

# (67) Day 30 1430 (1 hours 30 Minutes) Dirk's Horrible Idea

Tom continued writing on the white board as Dirk walked in. Mr. K, spinning slowly back and forth in the main control chair, stared through the canopy at the sky. Radius stood searching his own (internal) copy of the Book for ideas.

Dirk was profoundly disappointed – after the idea came to him, his hope that someone else had arrived at a different solution became overwhelming, the emotional equivalent of an approaching sneeze. He physically wanted Tom, his dad or Radius to yell out an alternative. "Eureaka!" they'd scream with joy. "Let's implement this now!"

But only his dad looked over at him as he entered the room. Tom was clearly not any closer to a solution than he was when Dirk left, and Radius looked as he always did.

"Maybe the comet will go off course on its own," he thought suddenly, and went over to the main terminal to check the atmospheric conditions.

Calm. Perfect weather for a delivery. He heart sank further.

"Checking the weather?" his dad asked.

"Yeah," said Dirk. "No luck there."

"No, I've been compulsively checking it myself, hoping for a cyclone," he said with a rueful smile.

"Dad, come outside with me. I have an idea."

"Great!" his dad hopped out of the chair. "Fantas-"

"No, Dad, keep it quiet," Dirk said, with a sideways glance at Radius.

"Ok," his dad said, and led he way out of the Control room.

"So, what is this idea?" his dad asked.

"Its bad, really bad," said Dirk, afraid to look his dad in the eye.

"Spit it out – we don't have a lot of time. Don't be embarrassed, get all the ideas out. As they collide we may come up with a better one – it is all part of the brainswarming process."

"I don't mean that it is a bad idea in that it is not fit for purpose, but that it is an evil idea."

"Say it, son."

Dirk took a deep breath, his eyes on the ground. "We can use Radius."

His dad opened his eyes wide in shock. "What do you mean?"

Dirk continued to look at the dirt at his feet. "The control system for the 4337 type is compatible with the Cranes. The connectors are the same, and they use the same language. We can wire Radius into the Cranes and he can serve as the router."

His dad thought a moment. "We can back him up."

Dirk was confused. "What?" he said, looking at his dad.

"We'll copy Radius' memory to the Control Tower computers, and then download him into a new unit. This body will be sacrificed, but he will be reborn."

This made Dirk feel a little better, but not much.

"How do we tell Radius?" Dirk asked sadly.

"He has probably reached that conclusion already," his dad said, "But if he hasn't he'll be compelled by the logic of it and volunteer."

They returned to the Tower.

# (68) Day 30 1450 (1 hours 10 minutes) Implementing an Unpalatable Solution

"Guys," Mr. K said, "Dirk has arrived at a solution, an unattractive solution, but one that I believe is our only realistic option."

"What is it?" Radius asked.

"Yeah, what is going to save the Martians?" Tom chimed in.

Dirk sighed, and looked at Radius. "We can use you, Radius. You are compatible with the Cranes..."

Silence.

"That's crazy," Tom protested. "We cannot allow our favorite Robot, our friend, who 'bent' the First law to protect T2, get roasted by a comet."

"The Laws pertain to all life," said Radius. "I'll do it."

"I'm sorry, Radius," Dirk said with a catch in his voice. "I can't think of anything else. But we'll back you up!"

"Yes," his dad added. "We have plenty of memory within the Tower's systems. We'll back you up completely, and then reinstall you into one of the 'embryos' in storage."

"Very well," said Radius. "Let's begin."

They stood there uncomfortably for a moment. Tom walked up and shook Radius' hand. Dirk, dejected walked over to Radius and stood facing him. Suddenly he smiled.

"Ok, Radius, please power down – it will speed up the download if we do it in the maintenance mode."

"Very well," said Radius.

"Lay down on the table, please," Dirk said.

Dirk helped Radius climb up, and when Radius was flat Dirk said, quickly, "Please initiate power down."

"Initiated," said Radius, and closed his eyes.

As soon as he powered off, Tom spoke up.

"Dude, that was cold! You didn't say goodbye or anything!"

"I didn't have to say goodbye, because we are not going to use all of Radius, only one part," Dirk responded with a happy smile.

"Fantastic!" said Mr. K. "But which part?"

"I remembered when we replaced his leg that it didn't work immediately because the control signal goes through a router in the back of his neck. The router has a memory of its own and 'learns' the specifics of each limb in order to control them appropriately. It is the source of his 'muscle memory'. It conserves processing power by freeing his main brain from doing the bulk of the body control work. The brain gives the basic direction, and this router figures it out and directs the limbs to move in order to implement the direction signal."

"So we only need his router!" Tom said, relieved.

"Yeah, and I plugged the new leg into it before, so I know how to get to it and the connections it uses. I was thinking Radius' brain had to do the controlling, but then I realized that we can wire the router into the basic navigation system and control it that way. The Book will run the program, the signal will go from the navigation system to the Book, and from the Book to the router to the engines."

"Brilliant!" said Mr. K. "And Radius will be here with us!"

"Help me turn him over so I can access the router. Then we'll put him in one of the control chairs so he can help me with the intercept," said Dirk.

"Gladly!" said Tom enthusiastically.

# (69) Day 30 1515 (45 minutes) Awakening

The usual black screen with the initialization code streaming by appeared before Radius' 'vision' or more precisely, the sensory pathway that delivered data primarily based on light. That first screen was the only one that he 'read'. The other information he simply accessed. The initialization screen was a relic of humans viewing the startup code to discern errors. The legacy function proved its utility as an error message flashed on the screen: "Mobility control failure".

Radius waited for the initialization process to finish and 'normal' vision resume. He wondered where he was. "Am I the reinstalled me or the me on the MegaCrane? If on the MegaCrane, this will probably be a short, but interesting, experience. Too bad I will not be able to review it later," he thought. "We are going to lose all this data. The Tower will of course record the bulk of the datastream, but not from my immediate and intimate perspective."

"Curious," Radius thought, as he saw the familiar Control Tower dome with the various Crane landing trajectory zones marked in grease pencil above him.

"Hi, Radius!" Dirk said, walking into his view. "I had to get another grease pencil- we're going to mark the intended track of the comet so I can see if we are shifting it sufficiently. Are you sufficiently awake to access the proposed track and help me graph it?"

"Yes," Radius said. His normal connection to the network came online and he accessed the track data. "180, 80; 160, 82; 140, 81; 120; 70; 100; 60; 80, 40." Dirk, standing precariously on the other chair, drew a line described by the points on the dome.

"Thanks, now I can track it visually. We only have one chance, and help is welcome," Dirk said.

"How are you feeling?" he continued, standing directly in front of Radius.

"Fine," Radius responded. "What is the status?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry. I removed your mobility router – that is why you can't move. We'll get you another one from storage after we deal with the Water Balloon. The comet should be here in about 30 minutes. We optested the MegaCrane – optest complete, optest sat. Now it's time to review the energy mobility equations. If you guide me during the intercept, and let me know when to go to full thrust then I think we can knock the baby away from Tharsis Minutus!"

"So I am not a copy?" Radius said.

"No! And I'm super happy about that, I must say. I think the distinction between soul and body has been exaggerated – you are everything you and that body have done and I'm glad all of you, almost all of you, is still here."

"Thank you," said Radius. "The Control Tower picked up the comet on the long range radar."

Tom and Mr. K came into the Tower.

"Dad, Tom, you guys have got to get out of here! We picked up the Water Balloon on the long range radar," Dirk said anxiously.

"No, I'm going to stick around with you guys and see this through," Tom said.

"That is an admirable sentiment," Mr. K said, but you have multiple responsibilities that trump your desire to be here."

"But..." Tom started to say.

"No time to argue," Mr. K responded. "I won't risk the Chief Engineer."

Tom sighed. "Ok, you're right."

He walked over to Dirk and stuck out his hand. "Good luck man, I'm sure you'll make it happen."

Dirk shook his hand – "Thanks, Tom, I'll see you, Mandy and T2 later."

"See you later Radius – I'll 'visit' the supply depot and get you a replacement router."

"Thank you," said Radius.

Tom left, and Dirk looked at his dad. "Dad, aren't you leaving too?"

"No, I'm staying here to help you guys."

"But Dad..." said Dirk.

"Son, if anything happens to you (such as getting obliterated by a comet) I want it to happen to me too. But I don't think that is going to happen, and by being here to assist you I'll be able to increase the probability that it doesn't. We don't have time for discussion, so you review those mobility equations with Radius and I'll check the MegaCrane one last time. I want to double check the thermal shielding we jury rigged."

"Thanks, Dad" said Dirk. "Ok, Radius, I'm going to pull up the mobility equations. We are going to have to trade altitude, vertical movement, for horizontal if we have to make any corrections for the intercept. Please make the calculations and tell me what to fire to make the course corrections."

"Roger," said Radius. "We have ten minutes to review before the comet will be in range of our short range radar, and in 12 minutes we launch the MegaCrane."

"This is going to be a short review," Dirk said, staring at the Control Tower Book in his hands.

# (70) Day 30 1557 (3 Minutes) The Comet Arrives

"Dirk, 3 minutes to launch," Radius said.

"Is it still tracking on the predicted path?" Dirk asked, hoping it was off course in a non-City threatening way.

"Yes," said Radius, without elaboration.

"This is it," Mr. K said. "Do you need any water or anything Dirk?" he asked.

"No, Dad. I feel too nervous to eat."

"Have a sip of water at least," his dad said, handing him a bottle.

"Thanks," Dirk said, not looking up from the Book. He took a small sip and then a longer drink – he was actually thirsty.

Dirk climbed into the control chair and grabbed his customary controller.

"Hey, Dad, could you please run out and give me a thumbs up if the control indicator on MegaCrane gives a green receipt signal indication?"

"Sure," his dad said, jogging out of the room. A few seconds later Dirk saw him by the MegaCrane, and hit the "test" button on the controller. His dad signaled back, and Dirk felt a little better. They'd tested it earlier, but he had the irrational fear that it had broken between the last test and now.

His dad hustled back into the Control Tower.

"Standby for launch," Radius said.

"Remember," Radius continued, "We are not going to impact Water Balloon head on – we rendezvous and then just before we impact make a sort of hooking maneuver so that we contact the comet at the same speed – it is a meet, hook, chase, connect maneuver.

"Yeah, ok, ok," concurred Dirk.

"However, the maneuver must be executed quickly and confidently – we lack enough fuel for a long tail chase – you must hook closely, and then immediately accelerate into the comet and give it all we've got to push it slightly up and away, affecting its trajectory enough to miss Tharsis Minutus,"."

"Water Balloon in visual range," Mr. K said quietly.

"Prepare to launch," said Dirk. "Radius, I can execute the maneuvers, just tell me when – you have better insight into the time and distance than I can figure out with the grease pencil or even looking on the radar."

"Roger, Dirk. As we discussed," said Radius.

"You are ready – you can make this happen!" said Mr. K enthusiastically.

Dirk watched Water Balloon as it began to track along the line he'd drawn on the dome and took a deep breath to keep from throwing up. He felt like he was in the final minute of a Games deciding set of thrusters, falling further behind the leader.

# (71) Day 30 1555 Exploration at Tharsis Minutus

Ailani paused at the spot where she'd found the strange equipment. Nothing, not even impressions in the wet soil, indicated anything unusual.

She activated her lantern and continued.

Slowly, she climbed up the slope through the increasingly dark tunnels – the bioluminescent lichen cultivated to light the tunnels was not present, since they had stopped using this part of the tunnel over a generation ago.

The change in atmosphere when she passed through the tight turn in the tunnel was immediately noticeable. She'd never felt air like this before, and had to stop for a minute to catch her breath. It was not the normal air she was accustomed to – it felt thinner, and much, much colder.

Ailani, slowly, continued up the tunnel. "Perhaps grandfather was the last one here," she thought.

He'd told her about the distant tunnels after their extended family festival last year. "In the old days, when I was a boy, we left our home once a year to go to the Great Festival. There the young men met their wives, and the girls their husbands. Some came back home with us, and others stayed with their new clans," he'd explained.

"Why did you stop," she had asked.

"I don't know," he said, thinking back. "We simply stopped going. I was very disappointed, but no one ever explained. Perhaps it was because our clan size had decreased so precipitously? I don't know."

As she walked up the tunnel, one hand on the wall for reassurance, Ailani thought she knew why – "This is terrifying!" The thin chill, and the increasingly strong movement of the air was like nothing she'd ever experienced. Fighting the urge to run back down the tunnel, she continued on.

"Light!" It was getting brighter, but it was not the bioluminencese to which she was accustomed.

Continuing around a curve she suddenly stopped, covering her shut eyes with her hands against the painful brightness. After a minute, still keeping her hands over her eyes, she opened one slightly, barely enough to see. Peering between her fingers, she allowed her eye to adapt to the light level and walked slowly forward. More by feel than sight she knew she had reached an opening into a space larger than any she had ever imagined.

# (72) Day 30 1600 (0 minutes) MegaCrane Water Balloon Intercept

"Launch!" said Radius.

Dirk hit the button and felt like his heart had stopped until the MegaCrane climbed into view through the dome.

"Delta down 10%" said Radius.

"Delta, 10 % down," responded Dirk.

"Delta, normal," said Radius.

"Delta, normal," said Dirk, modifying the thrust.

"Charlie, down 10%," said Radius.

"Charlie, 10% down," Dirk repeated, making the necessary adjustments.

As they talked back and forth, the monotone call and repeat calmed Dirk down. In the flow of the activity, he became too busy to feel nervous.

"These guys are a finely tuned machine," Mr. K said to himself, impressed. The murmur of their voices continued as the small bright spot constituting the MegaCrane approached the every increasing Water Balloon. It now appeared to be as big as a large stadium back on Earth, if a stadium on fire could fly through the air. Although about 40% water, it also contained dust and gasses that the heat of the atmospheric entry has caused to burst into flame. It was so close it seemed to grow bigger every second.

"The MegaCrane looks too small to affect it at all," thought Mr. K. "But calculus doesn't lie – it should have sufficient thrust to generate the minor change necessary."

Although he didn't show it, and Dirk and Radius were certainly not paying attention to the subtle, or not so subtle play of emotion across his face, his confidence was draining away quickly. He began thinking of ways to comfort Dirk after the interior of Tharsis Minutus was explosively transformed into a lake, with unknown, but certainly unwelcome, effects on the newly discovered Martians.

"Standby for hook," Radius said, his vocal volume increasing, though the tone hadn't changed.

"An increase in volume as an analog for nervousness?" Mr. K thought.

"Ready," said Dirk.

"Alpha Bravo, down 20%," said Radius.

"Alpha Bravo, 20% down," responded Dirk in a nervous shout.

"All full! Full! Full!" yelled Radius in a voice filing the Control Tower and seeming to echo throughout the Crane Farm.

"Full Full Full" Dirk responded, pressing hard as if excessive pressure on the buttons made any difference.

The three watched as the comet continued along the track for what seemed like a minute but was only a second or two, before it rose slightly above it, so slightly that only the faintest shimmer of sky could be discerned between the fireball that was the comet and the grease pencil line.

"She's out of fuel," Dirk said. The MegaCrane, or what was left of it, was now falling below the line, a speck of fire coming off the larger three stadium sized fireball that was the comet. Its coma extended all the way across the dome, filling what they could see of the sky.

And then it was out of sight. The coma, like a airplane vapor trail (though larger than any one had ever seen) slowly dissipated.

But they didn't care about that.

"Come on," Dirk yelled, putting down the controller and hopping out of the chair. "Let's go see what happened!"

Mr. K rushed over to Radius in the other control chair, and he pushed Radius back. Sitting himself on the very front edge of the chair he said, "Dirk, put his arms around my neck, and then push him out of the chair as I stand up."

"Mr. K, I am too heavy for you to lift," said Radius. "Go out and check now."

"No arguing," Mr. K said.

"But Dad," Dirk chimed in.

"Push him. You think I told you the importance of working out in this low gravity environment and yet allowed myself to float along like a couch carrot? Push!"

"One, two, three," said Dirk and pushed Radius up out of the chair as his dad pulled him onto his back, holding Radius' wrists in one hand and his left leg in the other. As soon as Radius was up on his back, he released his wrists and grabbed Radius' other thigh, hiking him up higher on his back.

"Let's go," he said, leading the way steadily down the stairs.

Dirk followed, impressed.

Only the coma, not the comet itself, was visible, as they rushed toward the garage where Dirk had left the LandCrane.

"Help me put him down, please, Dirk," said his dad when they reached the vehicle. Dirk wrapped his arms around Radius and held him as his dad squatted down, and they lay Radius gently on the Crane, before pushing him to the center so he wouldn't fall off.

"Whew," said Mr. K. "Radius, you need to lay off the ice cream or I need to do more deadlifts and squats."

"Beautiful work, Dad."

"Thanks, son, you drive."

Dirk started the Crane, while his dad held onto Radius' foot, so Radius didn't slide off the back as the Crane accelerated.

"We'll be able to see Tharsis Minutus from there," Dirk said, driving the Crane up the berm.

# (73) Day 30 1602 An Unwelcome Sight at Tharsis Minutus

Ailina, against her better judgment, continued slowly outside. The light level hurt her eyes, so she kept them almost shut and sheltered behind her hands.

Suddenly, the ceiling vanished and she was into a vast expanse of nothingness. It was too bright to see clearly. Suddenly, a noise, like the flow of lava but magnified as though all the lava in the planet was flowing past her in a cascade crashed into her ears. Involuntarily she looked for the source of the sound, and saw it, not where she expected it, but somehow ahead of the sound, a ball of fire in the sky.

Alinia turned and as quickly as she could fled back into the tunnel and, she hoped, safety. There was no longer any doubt in her mind concerning why the Festival trips had stopped.

# (74) Day 30 1605 Discerning the Outcome

"Watch where you are driving, son" Dirk's dad said as they headed up the hill and Dirk kept turning his head to look over his right shoulder at the coma, hoping to see the Water Balloon past and opening away from Tharsis Minutus.

"Almost there, almost there," Dirk said.

He stopped at the top and jumped out. Mr. K looked at the comet and then turned to move Radius into a sitting position, so he too could see.

"We should have taken your head off," he said.

"I'm glad you didn't," Radius responded.

"It looks clear," said Dirk hopefully. "Radius, what do you think?"

"I think it will miss Tharsis Minutus," Radius said, having compared the track data streaming from the Control Tower radar system and the visual data he was receiving from his own eyes.

"Yes!" said Dirk.

"Thank God," Mr. K whispered to himself.

"Oh Radius, you did it!" Dirk continued enthusiastically.

"Let's wait a minute for confirmation," said Radius calmly.

"Ok, ok, you're right," Dirk said staring intently at the comet. It seemed to be passing north of the crater.

The Water Balloon disappeared from view, past and opening to the southwest of Tharis Minutus.

"We did it!" yelled Dirk, jumping happily.

"Impact," said Mr. K, as a cloud of dust rose up to mix with the coma.

Dirk collapsed on the ground, spread eagle in exhaustion, as if he had won the Games.

Mr. K lowered Radius back down.

"Congratulations, guys. Dirk, climb on in. We have a lot to do, not least is to explain why we interfered with a major Company project, a key component of increasing the anti-fragility of the entire human settlement project by providing an additional backup water supply. Time for the decision concerning when and how we are going to release the news about the Martians is also short."

"Ok, ok, but I'm still going to enjoy this moment," Dirk said, starting the Crane.

"As you should," his dad agreed.

"And first things first – we have to get my friend Radius back on his feet."

"Indeed," said Mr. K. "We'll meet Tom at his house to repair Radius and discuss with Mandy the Martian revelation."

Dirk sped up as they reached the bottom of the berm – he'd never felt so happy.

End of Book One

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