Rover Mars

By Jim Walker

The crew of the Victoria Rover are back. This time it is not the International Space Station that is in jeopardy, it may be the human race.
An international manned mission is approaching Mars when a US Navy ballistic missile submarine mysteriously appears on a plain near the planet’s equator. Critics of the American administration both foreign and domestic raise the specter of global warfare at this supposed breach of international agreements on the proliferation of weapons in space, especially nuclear weapons. With the world on the brink of catastrophe and the crew of the submarine facing death, Peter and Sandy along with their companions, Mike and Christine brave seemingly insurmountable odds on an attempt to rescue the crew and put a stop to the madness.
The second book of the Rover Trilogy, with Rover to the Stars coming in the Fall of 2020.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Walker
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9780986623639

Jim Walker

Most of my writing centers around the West Coast of Canada, my love for the Rockies and travel. My books reflect the unusual and the exciting one can discover each and every day.

Book preview

Rover Mars

by

Jim Walker

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by

Jim Walker on Smashwords

Copyright © 2016, James (Jim) R. Walker

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

978-0-9866236-3-9

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To the dedicated women and men who push

back the boundaries every day. May they

forever be honoured.

Rover Mars

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Part One

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March 14 - Discovery Launch

Sandy brushes back a blonde curl poking out from the edge of her pink and purple beret with the large woven flower on the side. She suppresses a shiver and fiddles with the focus of the Nikon 7 x 35 binoculars she is using to resolve the brightly lit blob high in the night sky that Peter had pointed out. She watches it traverse the face of a full moon when it comes into focus. If she squints through the lenses she can just about make out sunlight reflecting off its great solar wings. It appears to her like some otherworldly dragonfly.

She shivers again, although not necessarily from the cool air around her. Sandy has sheltered as best as may behind her husband's hunched form. This, to cut at least some of the sharp wind off the Strait of Juan de Fuca this March night high up on the shoulder of Little Saanich Mountain.

As usual, he appears oblivious to the chill while quietly humming in contented mode as he adjusts his new SkyProdigy 70 Computerized Telescope.

He adds lyrics to his tune:

"The stars all out on Einstein's night…

Discovery's launch seems so right…

Hallelujah…"

She adds a sweet, contralto counterpoint to his not unpleasant baritone:

"Well I hear the poet in your soul.

Maybe leave the lyrics to the pro."

Peter says, Hallelujah.

Sandy says; what does all this have to do with Albert Einstein?

It is his work that provides the underpinnings for the propulsion system. We're about to see something like the biggest laser in, or out of this world, light off. Given the way the main system is set up it seems appropriate that one of the launch windows for Mars falls on his birthday.

Sandy lets the binoculars dangle from their neck strap and wraps her arms around Peter. She quivers slightly, her voice muffled against his back. I'm sure it is. How come we can't watch it in front of the TV, like normal people?

She can hear the grin. I guess we're not normal people. Ah.

He taps on a small keyboard attached to one of the legs of the tri-pod supporting the telescope and then turns, opens his three quarter length, bright red rain shell so Sandy can snuggle in closer.

It's tracking. He feels Sandy's nod. "As to TV, why listen to some network's pundit's regurgitation of an UN/NASA/ESA/RSA press release, provided we can even get coverage, when we can watch it live.

Besides, all the stories seem to me to be about some protest group like Earth First'ers, Flat Earther's or some other anti-science or pseudo science idiots waving signs in front of cameras. Even the footage from the International Space Station is pretty lame. I can get better pictures from down here."

Sandy look at this.

She peers out from her shelter at a LED display repeating the image from the telescope. There is the International Space Station, tiny, traversing the lunar landscape as if it was in orbit out there rather than barely above the Earth's surface. To the right and slightly behind is another object, which is the goal of their expedition. It comes to her, I really must love him to hike all the way up here in the cold and damp so that he can take pictures of a couple of dots 300 kilometers over our head.

Instead she says, ready for some hot chocolate?

That would be great. I'm beginning to feel a little chilled.

A little! Maybe you should have thought about it before putting on cargo shorts. You are the only person I know who would likely be wearing them up on the shores of Ellesmere Island, in the teeth of a high-Arctic winter blizzard and; not letting him off that easily, you would comment that it felt a little warm out.

Yeah, I guess being brought up a kid on the prairies will do that to you.

It has him thinking about Sandy's up bringing on the West Coast, about how with her petite stature she has a difficult time coping with chilly, damp weather. You really must love me, to put up with my foibles, he says, as if he had intuited her thoughts. Just let me set the camera and we can shelter by the observatory out of the wind.

Just as long as you know where we stand. And, I don't mean at the top of this hill by the observatory, before he can say anything. Also, I don't think we want to leave. Look at the sky.

Now, maybe people will become in time as jaded as they have with the other remarkable sights and events that the Universe occasionally decides to display; but for this one instant, this one precious moment, something magical had burst into the watcher's ken. The UNSES Discovery had lit off the array of Electro-thermal Plasma Thrusters that are her space drive. An object that, a moment before was virtually invisible to the unaided eye burst into a lambent glory against the backdrop of the starry, starry night.

Sandy crushes Peter's hand in both of hers. Oh, she says. Two beats later, oh. I'm glad we came up here.

Yeah, so am I, thanks, Peter says, looking at the glow in her wide, blue eyes that may have been a reflection of the telescope's image display, or the array sending humanity's great spaceship on its momentous voyage. He takes a deep breath, releases it and tears his gaze from his love's eyes to follow the streak across the heavens.

-- -- --

While the couple approximately 300 Km below Discovery is gazing up, Leonora Saskund, the ship's Commander and Chief Pilot, contemplates the glorious light bejeweled vista below. It is a particularly clear night over North America. She can see the great cities on each coast outlining the verges of the continent while the interior is dark, only occasionally lit by human habitation in what is essentially an empty expanse.

It may be said that she and her crew of 15 men and women have left Earth months ago as they prepared. The team has been intimately involved in the prepositioning project, insuring that needed materiel has been sent on its way to Mars. No vessel can expect to carry all that will be required for a sojourn on the planet no matter how short a duration. Given the length of the journey both in time and distance, and the available transit windows for a return; their stay on Mars will not be just a simple walk on the surface like the Apollo camping trips to the Moon back in the middle twentieth century. The intent of this project is to take the first steps to a permanent colony on Mars. The work that Leonora and her people will complete is for returning voyagers who have every intention of living there.

She shutters the view. Strange, she had thought at the time, we have high resolution, multi-spectrum displays that render the Earth with much more fidelity than what my eyes can perceive through the thickness of a flight deck porthole; yet we still insist on looking at the real view.

She shakes her head as if to dislodge an irrelevancy and turns to her second-in-command, Cheryl Kasper. Time to retract the control module.

Ay, Ay, Commander.

Cheryl taps on the screen before her. They feel a slight pressure from the straps across their chests as the spherical module lowers into its storage bay in Discovery's main body. The module will not be required until near the end of the transit.

Behind the control stations occupied by Leonora and Cheryl is a third couch, perpendicular to and slightly off the line between the view ports and the collapsing access way into the rest of the ship. The engineering station is half hidden by a console dividing the forward part of the compartment from the rear. Overarching the space are two-dozen displays and one huge, slightly curved organic light emitting diode (OLED) screen.

The couch's occupant is concentrating on the latter. He brakes off his gaze to check a status indicator on a smaller display panel to his left. He does not bother to look out the windows over his right shoulder as the module retreats into the body of the spacecraft. All he needs to know or is interested in is on his displays.

Docking complete, Harvey Dudly-Smythe says. He notes on his housekeeping functions display that the control module's bay doors are fully closed and latched. He shifts his attention to the large OLED display, which has a schematic of their engine systems, propulsion coming on-line. We will be ready for transition on the tick.

Thank you, Harv, Leonora says. Among the three in the control module communications are easy, almost casual; which belies the very high level of professionalism that they maintain. Harvey prefers being called, Harv, and Cheryl, without exception by everyone aboard including the Commander, calls her, Kat.

Kat checks a smaller display near her left knee, which presents a snapshot of the data on the engineering terminal. I concur, Commander.

Despite the team's easy nature, when they are on duty they always respond to Leonora by her title. The way they relate when off the clock is different, very different; as certain media outlets that may be said to lean toward the right of the socio-political spectrum, even in this age, went to extreme lengths to point out. Of course, a Commander is never entirely off duty. Perhaps that is why their particular dynamic works so well.

They settle back in the couches, Leonora scanning but not actually focusing on any particular readout. Any anomalous data will jump out as if flashing in red; so familiar is she with her vessel. She and her shipmates have, for all intents and purposes, grown up with Discovery.

Unlike the voyagers who had gone before them into the void who had almost no say in the design of the vehicles to which they would ultimately have to entrust their lives; Leonora, Harvey and Cheryl, along with their dozen fellow travellers have been intimately involved in every aspect of Discovery's design and construction. They have overseen everything from when her center spine had been laid down to the little, homey touches in the passenger accommodations.

Discovery is at once one of the most sophisticated devices ever constructed by humans and one of the simplest, which is perhaps a definition of sophistication; Leonora had thought at one time. The command module retraction system is one of roughly two-dozen moving parts within the 800-meter long and roughly 45-meter diameter construct. Ninety percent of their ship has no moving parts whatsoever, if you exclude things like faucets, cabin doors, hatches and the enormous hanger bay doors on the half of the cylinder opposite the passenger sections. Just over eighty percent of the ship by volume consists of enormous tanks surrounding the habitable sections along with the pumps used to feed the working fluid to her drive array.

Kat taps a surface near her left hand. Among her responsibilities are the passengers. A series of images rotate on the display above the touch pad. Everyone appears to be settling in, she says.

The migration out of their present orbit a kilometer above and behind the International Space Station (ISS) is automated; however, almost as a tradition, the team like their forbearers monitors its progress. If anything goes wrong, it will likely happen so quickly that any human response would be useless. That did not mean that they would not try.

This was a transition burn to adjust Discovery's orbit from ISS's 51.6-degree inclination to the equator into an equatorial orbit. At the same time the ship will drop from approximately 300 kilometers altitude to skimming the outer fringes of Earth's atmosphere, just 90 Kilometers up. She will accelerate from just over 28,164 kilometers per hour to just under 29,000. Not a radical change as far as even orbital velocities, are concerned. Given the total distance to Mars at this particular time of the year, every little bit of delta-V will help to somewhat shorten what is planned to be a year-and-a-half long voyage to the Red Planet.

Discovery's enormous size is not due just to the mass of propellant and perishables she must carry; it also is necessary for the crew's sanity. The ambiance of the amenities of a luxury cruise ship plying the oceans below could be likened to that of a garbage scow when compared to the comforts of this interplanetary cruiser.

For example, the crew's meals are an important consideration.

Dr. Henry Blythe, the mission's exeno-biologist had, as a hobby, graduated from the esteemed Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts of Julia Child fame. He likely would have been snapped up without a second thought by any property catering to the World's One Percent and paid an outrageous salary. He decided to go to Mars instead thereby accepting the much lower per diem offered by the UNSES.

Mind you, even this paltry sum properly invested will provide for a very comfortable living upon his return to Earth, such as with the rest of the crew.

The same goes with Dr. Carrie Wilson, the physician and a nutritionist amongst her other talents. She is in charge, along with Henry, of creating menus that are not only healthy but also good for the crew's morale. Carrie and Henry have spent many sleepless nights over the years of Discovery's construction developing a variety of meals that will stand up to at least four years of fifteen people looking for stimulation insofar as their diet is concerned.

Part of Discovery's trillion-dollar plus cost went to developing ways to keep fifteen people safe and sane to Mars and back. What they are going to eat and the variety of foodstuffs are just one small example.

Unlike other attempts at reusable spacecraft, Discovery has been designed by some of the brightest minds on Earth to be the ultimate interplanetary explorer. Mars is just the first of the many missions for which she has been built. She will have an operational lifetime well beyond that of her crew's professional lives. Discovery will have many crews and trips beyond this maiden voyage. However, this trip and the sojourn on Mars have to prove the concept and the huge amount of treasure invested.

The master clock's characters morph toward 00:00:00:10.00

"Discovery, this is CapCom. You are Go for launch."

(Some traditions never change. Of course, that is the nature of a tradition.) Leonora sets aside the irrelevancy. "Discovery concurs. Go for launch in T minus 10 seconds on my mark."

Mark!

CapCom, Bon Voyage, says Pierre Lamarque of the European Space Agency, charged with handling the initial phase of the mission into Mars orbital insertion. For political as will as logistical reasons, launch control is located at Cape Kennedy although anywhere on the planet will likely suffice. They will then hand off to the Pakistanis in their new facility in Islamabad who will be mission control for the first four months.

Another part of UNSES Discovery's cost was in equipping and training her multi-national support teams. This was humanity's first voyage beyond the Earth-Moon system. This spaceship belongs to the world, not just to the former and current space-faring superpowers like China, Russia, Japan, the European Union and North America. Even East Equatorial Africa has boomed when it was determined that they would be the best launch site for Discovery's supply missions.

The payloads will rendezvous with her in Mars orbit for the return trip. Despite her enormous size there cannot be enough perishables stowage for a round trip. If the supply ships do not reach Mars's orbit, or Discovery does not rendezvous with her supplies this could be a very expensive way for fifteen people to perish. However, every effort has been applied to use the latest robotic technologies for the cargo drones; robot technology that has successfully voyaged to the Sun's outer reaches and is still communicating with Earth. A separate, state-of-the art control center had been set up in Dubai as part of the United Arab Emirate's (other than financial) contribution to the effort. Every nation that could contribute wished to bask in the global prestige of this endeavor. Unlike the early space race this is not a battle for ascendency between normative superpowers.

The countdown ticks over to zero.

Three hands hovering over the abort buttons (one of the few electro-mechanical devices that would dump the propulsion system; literally blow it away from the rest of Discovery, should anything go wrong) clips the safety catches.

Leonora, Kat and Harv check their respective data dumps. Everyone in the control module appears composed. They know beyond any doubt that the systems work. They have been tested, errors discovered, repaired and tested yet again until there could be no doubt that they were going to Mars when their drive ignites.

Perhaps though, the ship's passengers may be forgiven, despite hundreds of hours of briefings, simulations and actual orbital maneuvers; for thinking that nothing is happening. The propulsion array streams a spectacular, tens of kilometers long artificial aurora. It can be seen unassisted from the planet below. However, despite the stream of energized plasma moving at very nearly the speed of light, the actual push on the spaceship is minuscule.

Compared to the explosive thrust of every rocket that has gone before the results, except for the light show, are almost anti-climactic. Anyone aboard would be hard pressed to say that they felt any sensation of thrust. If it were not for the fact that, for the crew and passengers this is the climax of a decade or more of their lives; and in some cases, with the younger members, their entire adult lives; the start of the voyage could have been looked upon a major disappointment.

As it is, Leonora can feel her pulse throbbing at her throat. We're on our way! She licks her lips before replying to CapCom.

We have a burn. The Array shows nominal.

She glances up at the mirror above her couch and sees Harv nod, his craggy face creased with a slight smile. It is his, everything in the green, expression. Anybody less familiar with him would be hard pressed to determine if his normally placid demeanor had changed in any way. To Leonora, Harv is bubbling with excitement.

She turns to Kat, look at Harv.

Kat glances up and nods. Our husband looks like a giddy school kid.

Unlike Harv and to a somewhat larger extent, Leonora, everyone pretty much knows how Cheryl is feeling from moment to moment. It is likely one of the reasons her fitness classes are so popular with the passengers. The joke is that they know that she is suffering right along with them.

The Commander nods flashing a smile in the mirror, which Harv acknowledges with a nod before turning back to his displays.

Kat flips her display to show her passengers, who are in the lounge monitoring Discovery's progress via their picture wall. Such are the orbital mechanics of this evolution that ISS appears stationary before them. The view changes to below in time to catch a sunrise. The Sun's glow over the display highlights the passengers varied expressions. Some flash smiles; others appear to be slightly thoughtful, perhaps realizing the possibility that it could be one of the last Earth-bound sunrises that they will experience for a rather long time.

It is not quite that way, though. They will circle Earth in an approximately seventy-five minute orbit at least three times as the ship executes the slingshot burn that will send them on their way. There will be at least three more sunsets; however this first one marks the change in their lives.

Leonora taps a set of commands on her left-hand touch pad. Navigational information flows on to her master display. She examines the vector representation and then taps another command to send a Doppler laser pulse off ISS's reflector. A second pulse actually bounces off a satellite lofted into an equatorial, geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers above the Earth. Triangulation between the two objects determines that they are actually moving and have progressed just less than a kilometer into their voyage.

Looks like we are on track, Leonora says.

"CapCom, Discovery, vectors appear nominal."

"Discovery, CapCom. We concur. Continuing to monitor."

"Discovery, acknowledges," she says, completing the formalities of the launch. The evolution is now up to the computers.

Kat, please let our crew know that they are free to move about.

Leonora suppresses a grin thinking that her remark is more like that of an airline pilot rather than a spaceship's commander; although it is true in some respects. The dozen people aboard, in the shuttle days would be considered payload specialists while she, Kat and Harv had the roll of the shuttle's flight crew. The passengers had spent their entire careers learning about and preparing for their destination: its geology; its climate; its possibilities for life now and in the future, rather than learning to navigate the void between Earth and Mars. They also spent much time and effort considering how humans may thrive on the planet.

They left the getting there to people like Lenora and her crew.

Among the passengers, there is a husband and wife team, he an agronomist, she a molecular biologist whose goal is to explore what it will take for Earthlike plants to survive and flourish in an environment that can best be described as worse than the Antarctic desert on Earth. The couple had spent three summer seasons in Antarctica working on growing hybrid wheat that can thrive on the windiest, driest and coldest climate on Earth. They now want to take the experiment further exploring if the wheat can thrive not only in the Martian climate, but also with roughly half of Earth's sunlight. They had speculated to anyone who would listen that perhaps the greening of Mars would one day bring back the blanket of air that had been stripped away over millions of years by a solar flux that had overpowered Mars' weak gravity. They could have tried other staple grains, however Canadian wheat appeared to be the best initial choice.

Then there is the civil engineer that had spent three years, day and night working on Mauna Loa, Hawaii as a stand in for the Mars. He had dedicated his Masters and a subsequent postgrad Degree to working out techniques for using Martian volcanic soil in