“I personally find that when I am abroad, I am always listening out for any mention of America. But in the absence of America-related subject matter, I casually introduce trivia into conversations,” she admitted. “I don’t do it consciously, I just do it. It usually starts with the sentence ‘In America…’ and then I’m off. And do you know what I think?” She didn’t leave time for an answer, although Danny seemed ready to give one. “I think it’s because as humans we constantly act as advertisers for our homes, towns, counties, nations, beliefs. You name it, we advertise it. When we go somewhere, we are obsessed with knowing what people think of where we came from, or what we represent. If we don’t receive that input, I’m sure that we are predisposed to plant knowledge, spread the ‘good word’, so to speak, so that when the next person like us arrives, their curiosity is more satisfied.”
He looked down at his plate of unappetising food. “And do you not think we might do this to simply make these foreign places more like home, so that they seem less alien to us, eventually expanding the circle of what our unconscious mind defines as home until it includes the location in which we currently find ourselves?”
Captain Montreaux looked at the Russian and smiled. “Like the first settlers in America. They built themselves a little Europe, changing the plants, animals and even soil, until they no longer found themselves in the New World, but in a carbon copy of the old one.”
“Which is why Jane would like to plant a nice flag on Mars, isn’t it?”
“No!” she said indignantly. “I want to put a flag on this planet to prove our achievement. And I think that whilst there may be some truth in your argument when talking about moving home permanently, the root of our desire to go anywhere is to witness what our homes look like from outside our normal viewpoint. On the smallest scale like a carpenter standing back and admiring his new table, or a builder standing back and looking at the house he has finished, and on the largest scale like a mission to Mars looking back at a reassuring light in an alien sky.”
“You said reassuring. Does that mean you feel insecure?” Danny smiled.
Captain Montreaux shook his head and decided to concentrate on his meal.
Jane opened her mouth, and Danny saw from the look in her eyes that it was time to get back to his original point. “Anyway,” he started, noting the frustration on her face. The word ‘anyway’ could at times be the most annoying in the English language, and Danny always used it to great effect. “I think that covers why we came to Mars, but why we came here precisely. To this exact geographical location on Mars” He gestured vaguely to the outside world behind him. “Dust, rock and more dust, not forgetting the rocks and dust.”
“Is there much else on Mars?” Montreaux asked.
“We are here, precisely, because of the water, Danny, because Beagle 4 kindly confirmed the presence of water for us, and because had we landed anywhere else in the hope of finding water and had not actually found any, we would at present be the first human beings likely to die on any planet other than Earth.” Dr Richardson said.
“Which wouldn’t have been very reassuring,” he joked. “I know we came here for the water under our feet, not to mention the gigantic, geologically fascinating impact crater a few kilometres away. I’m just annoyed by all of this dust.” He rested his head on the back on his chair and closed his eyes.
Montreaux turned to look at the Russian.
“You’re tired, Captain Marchenko, have something to eat and get to sleep.”
Danny opened his eyes and looked at him lazily. “I’m mostly tired of the dust. The dust is everywhere! I wear a suit out there, but I feel I have dust and grit in my hair! How can I have grit in my hair?”
“Because over the past two weeks, we have managed to bring the outside world in, despite the airlock.” Montreaux said. “I guess we have to be thankful that dust and grit is all that we’ve brought with us.”
Jane scoffed. “And the jury’s still out on that one.”
They fell into silence at the thought.
If life existed on Mars, it was most likely in bacterial form beneath the surface, which was exactly where they had been extracting their water supply from. Every precaution had been taken to prevent possible contamination, but they all knew that even the smallest amount of the wrong kind of alien bacterium inside their habitable compartment could spell disaster. The headlines were easy to imagine: “Life on Mars! Kills crew!”
So their scientist took samples of the dust every day and screened them for any signs of life, and was convinced that it was not a matter of if she found something alive rather than when.
During the first few days, they had managed to keep the MLP absolutely spotless, using the airlock to clean and decontaminate their suits as it had been designed to do. But slowly, inexorably, as the days went on and the number of EVAs increased, a fine Martian dust had begun to settle inside the craft, for obvious reasons mostly around the airlock.
No matter how many times they cleaned, the dust would continue to appear; Danny’s frustration notwithstanding, they had more or less accepted it as part of their lives on Mars, like sand in a beach house.
“Of course,” she broke the silence, “if we do find anything harmful out there, or in here, the chances are that our bodies would be so totally unprepared for it that we wouldn’t stand a chance. And given that we cannot sensibly stop the dust from entering the MLP, we may as well stop worrying about it.”
They both looked at her, stunned.
“Great!” Danny said throwing his arms in the air. “The only doctor on board thinks that we’re going to die here no matter what! I may as well go out there without my suit next time!”
She laughed, tossing her food tray onto the table and sitting down on a stool. “I would imagine that we’re all more likely to die of food poisoning anyway, at least until my experiments bear fruit.” She nodded towards a table at the far end of the MLP, covered in small trays with clear plastic lids.
Captain Montreaux reiterated his desire for Captain Marchenko to get some rest, before sitting down in his chair and opening his book. He was on his second read-through of The Martian Chronicles, and it was making a lot more sense to him this time round.
The Russian made his way to his bunk and lay down, looking at the ceiling. “So we have to hope for a combination of friendly Martian bacteria and your very successful green-fingers, I see.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “We’re doomed.”
The next morning, Dr Jane Richardson was alone in the MLP. Strangely, she had never felt more at home than right now. Surrounded by experiments in the middle of the most unexplored environment humans had ever set foot on, she was the first scientist to touch Martian soil outside of a Petri dish, and despite the dangers it presented, she was enjoying every minute of it.
As far as she was concerned, if things stayed as they were and with enough water and food, she could quite happily stay on Mars for the rest of her life.
She prised the lid off a small plastic container and poured the liquid contents into a large, shallow metallic tray. The transparent, clear substance settled evenly at the bottom of the tray, a small bubble bursting on its surface. She tilted her head to one side slightly, as if listening to it, before putting the lid back on the small container from which it had been poured.
Nanoplasma had been the crowning achievement of her work on Earth. The result of five years of her own research and development, she was the first to admit that she stood firmly on the shoulders of giants, and would not have been able to succeed without the hard work of the pioneers of the ‘Nano-age’, as it had been dubbed by the media back in the 2020s.