On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) (10 page)

Finishing the bar, feeling sated for now, and putting the hunger headache at bay, I turned the laptop tablet towards me. I activated the record function on the secure video software. The built in camera and microphone came on.

“Hey there Mission Control. Mike Lane reporting to you alive and well from Mars! Can someone please tell me
WHAT THE FRAK HAPPENED
? Holy fireworks Batman, I’m standing there minding my own business, about to go walkabout on an alien planet and
WHAMM
, I get smacked from behind by a two-ton truck. I mean really, guys, come-on, is that piece of
feh wu
still under warranty? Can you get a refund? Damn.” I lowered my head then looked up with a smile. “Okay, got that out of my system. The good Lord delivered me safely, and I never had any doubt about that. I just didn’t realize how exciting He was going to make it.”

That was when the giggles struck, and struck hard. They quickly became rib shaking laughter. Looking at the camera again, blue indicator light waiting for me, I continued, “I mean really, I take eight and a half months to travel 115 million miles in a tin can, and when I safely land on an alien planet …
BAM
! My ship explodes.” I laughed a few moments more until I got control of myself. It was time to finish and get some work done. The sun was past the high point in the sky and I needed to get the Living Hab set up. “Well, I guess it’s like Q said to Picard,
if you can’t take a little bloody nose maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed
. It’s dangerous out here
.” I raised the remnants of the tumbler of water in a toast. “I’ve got work to do. I’ll be in touch after I move the Living Habitat.”

I clicked the finish recording icon and then sent the message back to Earth without any encryption. I just didn’t care at this point.

Walkin’ the Casbah

How the Living Habitat was going to be moved was partially my idea. When I first joined the Corporation, one of the first things we did was tour the Habitat manufacturing facility in Karlsruhe, Germany. It was a small privately owned enterprise just north of the Automobilwerk Wörth on the west side of the Rhein River. Very picturesque area, very capable staff, very serious about every bolt, nut, joint and seam. They knew our lives would depend on every single thing they did.

Six of us spent two weeks living in a mock-up Habitat to get a feel for what we would be living and working with. After that, three of us spent a day with the engineers talking about how the Living Habitat (or any Habitat) systems integrated, and how it was going to be put precisely in position. We knew it couldn’t land closer than 200 metres to another Hab, because wind shear might blow it into it, and the rather large RAD engines could damage another Habitat quite extensively. The engineers’ solution was four titanium discs, like train wheels, which would lower down after landing, slightly lifting the Habitat from its landing struts. Big Dawg, the rover, would then attach to the Habitat structure and very, very slowly drag it into place. The big wheels were to have some power to them, so that they could rotate the Habitat structure if necessary, but they would not be able to traverse any distance on their own, even though they did assist Big Dawg’s towing ability.

This discussion quickly revealed certain misgivings about how precisely they could achieve alignment, and what would happen if Big Dawg had to move it over rough terrain, or a worse scenario, too steep of a rise in the terrain; which would render the whole operation impossible. The darn thing did weigh seven tonnes on Terra after all.

As I had stood there listening to the engineers, I had a stroke of genius. Okay, I thought it was genius. I outlined a radical, although not too complex, solution for the engineers. I thought for a moment they were either going to cry or shake my hand completely off my arm. Those German engineers certainly do get excited about their work. My solution was simple, allow the Habitat to
walk
into position. The mechanics of the solution were simple in my head. It was a bit more complicated in actualizing the idea but still something that could easily be done on Terra, and easily done on Mars. Instead of the complex computer programming for positioning the Habitat, the Rover would simply drag the Habitat on its train wheels as far as it could, and then the colonist on site would hook up a remote control unit and use pneumatically controlled legs to “walk the Habitat unit”.

With its present position, I needed to move the Living Habitat (L-Hab) five feet closer to the Work Habitat (W-Hab), move it 45 centimetres to relative “left” and then rotate the L-Hab about 15 degrees. This positioning was too precise for Big Dawg’s rough towing ability, and I was glad I didn’t have to do it by hand (which it could be done, but with a
lot
of effort … by many people, with lots of block and tackle).

I went back to the airlock and suited up again in my flight Activity Suit. Everything checked. I tore open the plastic on the first storage cupboard below the small bench in the airlock. I detached the flight restraints and removed two items. One was a heavy canvas bag that contained the small set of tools necessary for the exterior work around the Habitat structures. The second was the controller that would control the movement of the L-Hab on its mechanical, stubby legs. I depressurized the airlock, pulled the outer airlock door inboard. I leaned down to the floor to cut the restraints and pick up a large packaged coil of umbilical cables, to connect the two habitats, and tossed it out the door. It was kind of a jaw-dropping moment to watch it fall to the ground, so much slower than when things fall on Earth. “Neat-O,” I said to myself, and then climbed down the ladder. The airlock had a fail-secure system on the outer hatch. If no one passed through the outer airlock door for ninety seconds, the servos would kick to life and shut the door automatically. This was so one person wouldn’t leave and accidentally strand the others inside. I paused a moment, looking out over the not-so-distant sand dunes, and let the hatch close itself to make sure it worked, and it did.

I walked around the W-Hab and headed towards the L-Hab. I stopped midway to look out over the debris that not so long ago, I had almost been part of. It had only been ninety minutes since I climbed out of the airlock wreckage. The smouldering had stopped. I sighed heavily, I was dead tired but had miles to go before I could sleep.

The L-Hab was only ten feet away. Big Dawg had finished moving it there weeks ago. Little Dawg, with Big Dawg’s help, had uncoiled the solar collectors. Big Dawg’s manipulator arm had been used by Mission Control to plug in the solar collector power feeds. I walked the length of the five collector strips and removed the ground pegs holding it in place. Little Dawg was close by, so I walked over and deposited the pegs, 60 in total, into its utility tray. I didn’t want to lose them, and the rover might as well make itself useful.

The L-Hab was almost in alignment but it needed to be five feet or less at the nacelle skirting and within three degrees of axis alignment with the W-Hab. First order of business was to remove all of the sections of the nacelle skirt. The walking process needed to extend the walking legs from underneath the L-Hab to accommodate the mechanisms of motion. I also needed to be able to see what was happening underneath to properly control the “walk”.

I set down the controller in a safe place and then opened the canvas tool bag. I took out the universal wrench and went to work. All exterior coverings, ports, joints, etc. used a bolt with an inset head. For simplicity’s sake, the exteriors of all the equipment sent to Mars used six sizes of bolt, using three different size heads. The universal wrench had three attachments. Selecting the correct head size; it was like a backwards ratchet set. I placed the universal wrench head attachment into the depression in the bolt head, and turned it counter-clockwise. There was a power feature for this wrench, but I had not had time to charge it up, so I did it the old fashioned way. I moved a small slider on the side of it to put the power head into Manual-Ratchet mode. There were eighteen bolts to remove in each of the nacelle skirt sections. There were twelve nacelle skirt sections to be removed.

I did this carefully and step-by-step according to the procedure I had memorized. All the bolts went into the pockets on the legs of my outer jumpsuit. Everything had a procedure for the mission, and for living on Mars. I had memorized most of them on the trip here and I knew from jobs I had in the past that a good procedure keeps you safe and protects you. I was not only a leader, I was a good follower. Life had shown me that all good leaders are at first, good followers.

I moved the large pieces of metal away from the L-Hab and placed them together, leaning one on the other, in the order I removed them. I wasn’t worried about them going anywhere as the wind was only gusting around 20 km per hour according to the readout I checked before coming outside.

I returned the wrench to the tool bag then walked over to the controller, picked it up and walked back to the L-Hab. Now it was pucker time. I knew the L-Hab had enough power for this, the batteries were fully charged, and I was moving it such a short distance that I didn’t need to disconnect the solar collector. It would just drag a bit with the L-Hab as it moved the few feet into position. I would re-align it afterwards. The pucker moment was going to be whether or not the “legs” responded. They were pneumatically powered and that pneumatic system was about to check out nominal, but it was still -20
° Celsius. I had some concern that the low temps would affect the legs, even though the German engineering team assured me these temperatures, summer temperatures for this latitude, would not be a problem. They had guaranteed the legs and pneumatic system to work to
-114
° Celsius.

There was close to six feet of space under the Habitat structures. The three very large RAD engine nacelles occupied most of the space. Eventually we would remove the RAD assemblies, but that was not scheduled until there was a larger team on the ground. There was a small box that had once been white but was now covered in soot. It was under the L-Hab bottom and directly beneath the active breezeway, which for today’s orientation was at the “rear” of the Hab, insofar as today’s movement considered the passive breezeway to be the front.

I went back for the wrench and then used it to remove the cover plate from this previously white box. I remembered there was a pocket on the leg of my Activity Suit specifically for the universal wrench. I slipped it into the pocket and then uncoiled the cable attached to the controller. The box I had uncovered had two things in it, a USB port and a hardpoint clip. I snapped the metal protective cover off the USB port then plugged the controller into it. There was a small chain on the controller cable which I attached to the hardpoint clip, to keep the USB cable from being unplugged while we moved.

At present, the L-Hab was resting on its landing struts. After Big Dawg finished moving the L-Hab, the train wheels had retracted and left the L-Hab on its landing struts for stability. The train wheels would never be used after today, so long as we didn’t have to move the L-Hab any great distance.

I powered up the controller and checked the walker system, everything was in order. I activated the first step in the walking sequence.

The first step in this process was to extend the four leg assemblies laterally. Each leg assembly had two legs that were on independent vertically mounted swivels. These were attached to the articulation controller, which was mounted under a third horizontally integrated swivel assembly. This allowed the legs to be turned in any direction and walk forwards or backwards. This entire leg assembly was on a strong piston arm that would extend them laterally beyond the base of the L-Hab. The legs had to unfold into position and the top swivel point could not rotate fully upward until the assembly had cleared the edge of the L-Hab itself. While it sounds complex, the design is fairly straightforward, and it allowed the L-Hab to be moved 360
°.

The mechanics of walking was simple. Lower one of the legs on each corner to raise their respective assembly to an individual height that would keep the L-Hab relatively level. Then move each legs paired leg, so that it was 10 centimetres higher than the first leg. Next, activate all four ground-contact leg swivels, through a simple series of pneumatic pistons so that the L-Hab would appear to be falling forward on those legs. They moved slowly but faster than you would expect as stopping in mid “fall” could severely damage the walker mechanism. As the L-Hab “fell” forward, it came to rest on the legs that were a few centimetres shorter. Next, retract the legs that had just walked, extend the resting legs to the proper height, reset the tilted legs to upright orientation, and set their height to 10 centimetres above the now supporting legs. Then the process repeated. After the legs were lowered in initial position and had taken the weight of the L-Hab, I sent the command to raise the landing struts. Then I began the
not-as-slow-as-you-would-think
process of walking the big Habitat structure a short distance across the surface of Mars.

We kept going on like this for several minutes. At some point it was going so fast and flawlessly I started humming a tune and thought to myself, “Yep, we’re really ‘
Walkin’ the Casbah’
now.” Gotta love those German engineers.

Each walk cycle took about three minutes to complete and moved the L-Hab about 8 centimetres. I could have taken bigger steps, but I preferred, after the day I had already had, to play it slow and safe. In between each walk cycle, the procedure was to examine the footing in “front” of the legs to make sure there was nothing that would appear to make the next step unstable. The legs had 10 centimetre square solid titanium
shoes
to distribute the weight and not sink too far into the regolith. The “walking” procedure made each step in the walking process about five minutes long, including the actual walk cycle. It took a little over an hour to move the L-Hab the five feet that brought it within five feet of the W-Hab. The pneumatics were, by nature, sealed systems, but I had expected to hear
some
sound. Mind you, the little sound it did create, was hard enough to hear within the thin Martian atmo to begin with. Compound that with the insulating properties of the Activity Suit, and it was like watching a TV show with the sound turned all the way down. I didn’t even feel any ground tremor at my feet. I turned on the external microphone on my helmet and then I could hear it. It wasn’t very loud at all in the thin Martian atmo. It took almost fifteen full minutes to lower the train wheels, lift the walker legs and orient the axis to align it with the W-Hab. Then it took just over another thirty minutes to walk the L-Hab relatively “sideways” to put it in final alignment. That final movement was very fiddly and precise, so each step took longer.