Image: NASA
Chapter 6
This was a strange mission thought Rex Stamford. First, he had been contacted surreptitiously through an acquaintance. Next, he was to take the “bus” from Bradbury to Capri settlement, almost eight-hundred kilometers distant. There he was to meet a man, Mr. Roscians, unknown to Rex to discuss a job opportunity.
Rex boarded the bus at the Bradbury terminal. The bus was a large scale version of a Mars crawler that had room for up to fifty travelers. The seats were none to plush for what would amount to a forty-hour journey. The only “luxuries” were an on-board toilet and a snack bar provided by the bus line's attendant.
Rex was seated next to a woman who was traveling to Capri settlement to see her son. Her son was a pilot for the mining company in Capri. He flew the miners up to the sulfate mines northeast of the settlement.
“Really,” said Rex. “I understand they are just getting the magnesium processing up and running. A lot of good uses for those sulfates.”
“Yes,” said the woman. “My son says they have the processor up and going, it shouldn't be long until they can start selling some refined products. Bath salts would be nice to have again.
“And you Mr. Stamford, do you have business in Capri?”
“I'm going to Capri for a job interview. I'm afraid I can't say much about it yet. I really don't know much about it. Like your son I'm a rocket jockey really, although I've worked many different jobs since I've been on Mars.”
“Haven't we all,” said the woman. “I've done everything from baby sitting to accounting. Accounting, that was my profession before I came to Mars.”
“I suppose on Mars a profession is just a suggestion as far as employment goes.”
They both laughed. Eventually their banter died down and Rex found himself looking out the window.
The crawler was making its way along the side of the Valles Marineris canyon complex within a few hundred meters of the rim. Rex knew the builders tried to maintain as level a road as possible but eventually they would have to climb a little as they tunneled through the Ganges Chaos to reach the rim of the Capri Chasma and Capri. But the Ganges Chaos was still more than a day away.
By the time they emerged into the Capri Chasma area Rex and the woman had just about had all the traveling they could stand. Though the seats reclined somewhat they were uncomfortable as a bed even in the lighter gravity on Mars. They were both bleary-eyed and cranky.
“I don't think I want to ever make this trip again, not until they have the tube finished,” said Rex to no one particular.
The woman next to him said, “I don't blame you Mr. Stamford. I'm only staying with my son a month and I hope it's long enough for me to recover.”
“I know what you mean.”
It was late afternoon when they arrived in Capri. Rex said goodbye to his seat mate and headed for his room at the Capri Interplanetary Hotel. It was a fancy sounding name for what would pass as a small motel on Earth. It was all underground but at least the room promised a hot shower.
It was the following day when Rex met with Mr. Roscians.
“Now as I understand it Mr. Stamford you are well qualified to fly a Mars style hopper rocket?”
“Yes, that's correct Mr. Roscians.”
“And you also have experience with orbital rendezvous?”
What rendezvous would be contemplated using a hopper, Rex wondered?
To Roscians he replied, “Yes.”
“And you even have EVA experience I believe.”
“Yes.”
“Good, good. Now Mr. Stamford what my client needs you to do is to establish a communications relay station on Phobos.”
“With a hopper rocket!”
“A modified hopper rocket,” said Roscians. “I assure you it has the capability to do the job otherwise we wouldn't be using it. The establishment of this station is crucial for my client's research.”
“Okay. But I will have to review the modifications before I commit myself to such an endeavor.”
“Of course Mr. Stamford. Actually we were hoping you would supervise the modifications. You know better than anyone what is required for such an expedition. Just rest assured that whatever you need to complete the conversion will be made available to you. Also two years pay, as reckoned for a interplanetary pilot, will be transferred to your bank account immediately upon commencement of the mission. Until then all your expenses will be paid. But there is one thing Mr. Stamford, for you to collect your pay you must complete the mission within a Martian month, and my employer would like it be kept quiet if possible.”
“If you provide the funds, you say you will Mr. Roscians I will meet your deadline.”
Chapter 7
Daniel Keys was getting up to speed on the possibilities involved in the incident with the EV. He was aware of Abel's list and now was listening to John explain how the EV might have been sabotaged.
“The thing is,” said John. “You wouldn't believe the skill it took to change the programming and not have it noticed. You see, you can't just put in a routine to lock the power relays on because that could be overridden by the safety check routine. So if you really wanted to lock the power relays in their on state you would have to change the routine that is directly responsible for that and the safety routine. Then you would need to change or fool the monitor routine into believing the safety routine wasn't changed.”
“So what you are saying John is that it would take someone with an intimate knowledge of the software and the hardware. Is that right?”
“Yes. But the intimacy with which you would have to know all three of the software routines would be overwhelming for any one person. I mean this software wasn't written by just one or two people but dozens. And it has also been submitted to the computational software Annie, which then modified it to the point that some people wouldn't recognize their own code.”
“But what about this list. The one you made that listed people with the likely expertise to accomplish such changes.”
“Well sure, the list. It's my best guess as to who might be able to do it. But it is a guess, in all honesty I don't think there is anyone I know of on Mars that could pull it off.”
“Someone had to do it,” said Daniel. “Even if they didn't have the direct expertise they had the motive to get it done, they could have enlisted the help of an ANI couldn't they? We know it wasn't an accident don't we?”
“Oh yes. We can be sure it wasn't an accident for the same reason that I don't think anyone on Mars could have done it even with the help of an Annie. Remember Annies don't evolve their programming they learn from examples. And without real-world input, the simulations needed to train an Annie would be impossibly prohibitive for any single person.”
But maybe one of the new Ems, thought John.
“What do you mean that it would be prohibitive for any single person?” asked Daniel confused.
“I mean, Daniel, that if you think about it, the chances of it being an accident are slim. Because the changes in all the routines would have had to occur in the proper order or at almost the same time. And the changes would have to be in such a way as to reinforce the likelihood of failure.
“I mean why would all the routines change in just the right way so that they all contributed to the failure? It is more likely that any changes would cancel each other not reinforce. I'd expect the same if it were programming bugs lurking in the code that caused the failure. The conditions that would cause all the bugs to occur and in the proper sequence and fail in the proper way are highly unlikely. So you see it isn't likely to be an accident.”
“Great John,” said Daniel exasperated. “What you are telling me is that it couldn't possibly be an accident, it couldn't possibly have been coding errors, and it couldn't possibly be any one person, and it couldn't possibly be an Annie. What do you think that leaves?”
He paused. “Nothing.”
John shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “I guess I'm glad I'm not you.”
Chapter 8
Rex Stamford had worked around the clock to supervise the hopper modification. He had enlisted the help of his network of acquaintances he had worked with on both Mars and Earth. The main change to the hopper rocket was the additional fuel tanks strapped like a belt around its main rocket. The extra fuel would allow the rocket engine to burn long enough to achieve a rendezvous with the Mars moon and then provide the needed retro-burn to bring the rocket back down.
Rex had borrowed the results and necessary calculations from public documents filed by other expeditions. He had enough fuel to duplicate the orbital elements of those other expeditions and rendezvous with Phobos at some nine-thousand four-hundred kilometers altitude. He had chosen a small ridge on the trailing side of the moon as his target for placing the relay station.
Rex had contracted for an expensive, made to fit EVA suit for himself, something he could keep afterwards. Even so, at no time did Roscians balk at paying the bills and he never even requested an explanation for an expense. Because Rex was able to pay a premium for all services the hopper rocket was ready on time.
On Mars the operation of hopper rockets was so common that not much attention was paid to them. But since Roscians wanted this operation to be kept under wraps, Rex would make several hops before taking off for orbit so as to throw off any unwanted observers. One thing that was different about this hop was that Rex would have no ground crew support, something that would have dissuaded him usually except for the payday he was receiving.
Rex made one last check of his bank account to see the unusually high balance before firing the hopper's main rocket. This first hop would be a short one of a few kilometers. Several hops later he was ready to fire the long burn that would give him the over two kilometers per second velocity he would need for rendezvous. Except for a few trips to Earth's moon, Rex had never been over a hundred kilometers above the surface of Mars in a rocket. But so far everything seemed to be nominal.
The navigational ANI was right on the money, Rex was mesmerized as he approached Phobos. He had seen many photos but the clarity he had from just a few kilometers above the surface was unbelievable. Soon he would take over the controls to bring the rocket down to just a few meters above the moon's surface. If all went well the station would deploy from there with only a slight impact.
Rex busied himself taking detailed pictures of the spot he thought best to deploy the station. On the slight ridge on the trailing side of the moon, the relay station would almost always be in sight of the Martian surface.
Rex brought the rocketship down. A specially fitted compartment in the body of the rocket just below the command section would open and drop the station to the surface when Rex was ready.
He was almost in position, intently concentrating on the moon's surface when his vision blurred.
He was taken aback. He tried to clear his eyes with the back of his glove even though he was helmeted. He looked again at the moon and saw the surface blur. He realized then that it wasn't his eyes causing the blurring, it was the moon's surface! The moon was vibrating, quaking, or something. He knew that Phobos was under stress from Martian tidal gravity but this was the first time he or anyone else had seen such an effect. He turned on the visual recorder for confirmation of what he saw.
Rex knew that the station might not be able to right itself if he just dumped it out the hatch from this height. Maybe the quake would stop if he waited, or maybe it would last long enough for him to run out of air. He couldn't take the chance of waiting, he would have to go in closer and wait just long enough for the shaking to subside a bit.
Unlike a hop on Mars the small moon's almost non-existent gravity required the approach to be similar to a docking maneuver. Rex would use the reaction control rockets to lower the spaceship to within only a meter or so above the moon's surface. At that height even if the quake continued the station should be able to land and right itself.
He jettisoned the relay station. The station hit the surface after the short drop, righted and deployed its antenna just as the ground seemed to jump upward at the hopper. Rex reacted quickly by firing the attitude rockets. He heard a scatter-shot of rock pellets bouncing off the hopper's skin. When he had achieved a sufficient angle to the moon's surface he fired the main rocket motor. The hopper jumped into motion.
Damn, thought Rex, that was close.
He ran a systems check and found one of the reaction motors to be balky but nothing else. He felt lucky. I can handle that, he thought. Now let's get back to Mars.
The hopper rocket had been fitted with a carbon fiber shield along the bottom half to deflect some of the reentry heat. Reentry wouldn't be severe though because there wasn't that much velocity to shed. Rex oriented the rocket and fired the main motor to slow down and drop from orbit.
The hopper rocket had slowed and was almost stationary about a kilometer above the Martian surface. Rex would set it down, get his bearings and hop his way back to his launch site near Capri. He was thinking of all he could do with the lump of money in his bank account when he heard the main rocket shutdown. The hopper started dropping. He tried to restart the engine, no luck, he tried again, no luck. He was dropping faster.
He remembered the old stabilizing para-sail which was a safety precaution for emergencies. He deployed it but wasn't sure it would have any effect on slowing his velocity because the height above the ground wasn't optimal. The hopper continued to drop but just before it hit the surface he felt the para-sail's tug.
It was a rough landing, Rex was shaken.
When he had collected himself Rex found he was still in one piece. But the hopper rocket was split open with the cockpit exposed to the elements, luckily his suit was intact. He scrambled to extricate himself from the wreckage.
On the ground, he opened his Annie, it still worked. The first thing he did was check his bank balance.
Anyone observing the scene would have been amazed at the animated gestures coming from the space-suited man that had just crashed a hopper rocket. But there was a reason.
The bank account was empty, or nearly, Rex now knew why he had crashed.
Chapter 9
Al Dixon was on his way home after having been interviewed by Daniel. It was hard to believe they were even considering him as one of the suspects. He wasn’t motivated by any political or social animosity and he certainly wouldn’t do anything to hurt Abel or John.
He thought the same could be said of Joseph who went into Daniel’s office after he left. He had known Joseph too long to believe he would be involved in anything so awful.
“Joseph,” said Daniel. “I think we have covered most of the questions I wanted to ask you. Just one last question, why did your parents come to Mars?”
“My understanding is that there was some prejudice against their politics.”
“And what were those politics?”
“The usual, small-government conservative, leaning libertarian, self-reliant type I guess.”
“And do you share those beliefs?”
“Don’t have to. Mars is de facto small government, and most folks are too busy trying to stay alive to have time to infringe on another person’s rights. And self-reliant? If you are on Mars and don’t show a good bit of self-reliance then you won’t last long. I guess that reality trumps politics every time here on Mars.”
“Okay Joseph, thank you for your time and for coming in, would you ask Mr. Rodrigue to come in as you leave.”
“Sure, let me know if I can help any further with the investigation. I don’t like to think what the outcome could have been hadn’t young John responded so well. Goodbye.”
Joseph left the room and stopped to tell the man in the waiting area that he could go in. Maxim Rodrigue nodded his head and went into the office.
“Come in Mr. Rodrigue and have a seat. I’m Daniel Keys, you may call me Daniel if you wish.”
“Thank you,” said Maxim, “you may call me Max.”
“Very well Max. I want to ask you a few questions about your job, your background and your life here on Mars, if I may.”
“Of course,” said Max.
“Let’s begin with your job. According to my information you work as an engineer with the firm Mars Reworkers, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And what does Mars Reworkers do?”
“We design and maintain electric motors, particularly traction motors for the EV fleet.”
“And what exactly do you do for Mars Reworkers?”
“I mostly write the code for motor control.”
“I see,” said Daniel leaning forward. “And that brings us to your background. You recently immigrated to Mars from Earth, is that right?”
“Yes sir.”
“And why may I ask did you decide to immigrate?”
“I felt my future prospects on Earth were somewhat limited.”
“Would you mind expanding on your answer?”
“No, I don't mind, you can easily find out about my past if you haven’t already.” He paused a moment. “I became involved in a wrongful death court case in which I was listed as one of the co-defendants just because I was an engineer on the project. The case was brought by a transit agency that charged my company with negligence in a railway accident claiming a number of lives. The case was settled out of court by my company, but I was let go. The impression in the industry was that I was at fault for the accident.”
“But you were never charged with any wrong-doing, is that right?”
“Yes sir,” said Max. “There was never any question about the cause of the accident. It became known that the train engineer made a mistake in interpreting the locomotive's readouts. The transit authority took responsibility for the engineer's training, and the company took responsibility for a poorly designed human-machine interface. So the settlement was mutually agreed upon. I was just collateral damage.”
“Okay Max, thank you for coming in.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Max as he rose to leave.
Chapter 10
“I tell you Abel this is the darndest thing I've ever heard of,” said Daniel. “I don't think anyone of the three on your list had anything to do with sabotaging the EV. And I don't think anyone in Candor could do it, probably no one in Bradbury either. So I'm stumped.”
“Well,” said Abel. “We are certain it wasn't accidental so therefore it had to be deliberate. Obviously the list isn't complete. They were just suggestions, informed to be sure, but still guesswork.”
“And we aren't beyond guessing yet.”
“Are you sure none of the men you interviewed could have done such a thing?”
“I'm as sure as I can be.”
“How about the new man Maxim Rodrigue?”
“You might think him the odd man out. But I checked his story, he didn't hold anything back, it happened exactly as he said it did. And since I'm sure his story is true then he has as much to lose as to gain from such a deed.”
“You think so?”
“Abel he's another immigrant coming here for a new start. How many of us aren't?”
“I know but he does have the expertise and his background is suspect even if he doesn't lie about it.”
“Yeah, I know Abel. But there is something about him that says to me he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, no more. Most of us are just lucky the same hasn't happened in our lives.”
“That's true. Too many people blame without realizing how close we all are to being hurt by the whims of chance. So where does that leave us?”
“That leaves us at the beginning,” said Daniel. “I'm going to have to go through the longer list of suspects. Maybe we missed something that would have put one of those on the shortlist. Anyway, my help should be arriving in a couple of days. That should make going through the longer list easier.”
“I suppose so. But that is going to take some time. Meanwhile any one of us could be in the way of whatever these people are after. We need motives, that's what we need.”
“Yeah, motives, a suspect, an arrest, a conviction, that just about sums it up, I think,” Daniel said in exasperation.
“We need one other thing Daniel.”
“What's that?”
“A break.”
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