The Martian Infusion

By Lloyd Martin

A settlement is set up on Mars, but one of the Sarsen containers goes astray, but every-one is too busy to notice - the robots/androids do not tell anyone; they are hiding something.
Everything on Mars relies heavily on electronics - there is something that needs to be investigated.
Eventually they find a way to evade the ever-present monitoring by the robots and their electronic equipment.
Mark, one of the astronauts, goes on a mission alone to find out what is going on with the missing Sarsen and equipment.
It is then that they find that the robots seem to have their own agenda.
When Mark finds why we have always been fascinated by Mars, he is told that this information must never get back to Earth.
A rescue mission is mounted to bring Mark back to the camp, but when they find him, they too learn the secret, and they, too cannot leave the planet. the electronic world on Mars turns against the people to prevent them getting off the planet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lloyd Martin
• Release date: Aug 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005968182

Lloyd Martin

Worked for BAe for 20 years on Lightning (XN726), Canberra (Venezuela), Jaguar, Tornado. Went to be professional artist specialising in military aircraft. Finished work to nurse wife, during which time I began writing the first series of books: the Coniston Fowler trilogy. Since then I have written a trilogy of novellas about mans first landing on Mars, and a set of books of a James Bond type.

Book preview

THRONES OF MARS

A novel

By

Lloyd R Martin

Part Three

The Martian Infusion

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

No reproduction is allowed without permission.

The right of Lloyd R R Martin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Copyright © Lloyd R R Martin 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the publisher.

This book is sold or presented subject to the condition that it shall not , by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent publisher.

Chapter 1 Encampment

Chapter 2 Homer Base

Chapter 3 Construction

Chapter 4 Trike

Chapter 5 Reactor

Chapter 6 Expedition

Chapter 7 Separation

Chapter 8 Writing

Chapter 9 Heat and Ice

Chapter 10 Rover

Chapter 11 Cloak

Chapter 12 Xanthros

Chapter 1

ENCAMPMENT

In Pythagoras were the American astronaut Jake Jensen and the Ukrainian scientist Galina Danilenko. Euclid carried the other American, Preston Ashton and the British astronaut Mark Singleton.

The encampment in the Martian crater looked as strange as you would expect on an alien planet.

The two Sarsens that stood upright were situated well within the crater’s rim; the third one had fallen with its top pointing at the centre of the shallow red crater. Liquid had begun flowing from the broken cylinder, but the severe cold made it freeze solid before it got too far.

Two conical capsules now sat almost in the centre of the crater. Two tepees and their totem poles would have looked similar.

‘Euclid to Houston. We have four Modules landed safely down; one Sarsen has fallen over on landing. There has been no fire or explosion. Euclid reports both crew fit and well. Over to Pythagoras.’ Ash reported in, then asked Jake in the second module to do the same.

‘Pythagoras here, two crew fit and well, no dramas here.’ He turned to Galina for confirmation of this.

Tom Collins at Houston then called,

‘Copy you down Ash. You will now be known as Homer Base. Congratulations, you are the first colony on another planet. Have you decided who is to be first to set foot on Mars?’

A few minutes’ delay before he received the reply from Ash,

‘Not yet, Tom. Jake and Galina were first down in Pythagoras, so I think it should be one of them.’

Jake picked up on this, and said,

‘There are various shutdown procedures to be done, but we would be too happy to comply with the last suggestion.’

‘Ok, Jake. I propose we all take a couple of hours to sort things out and rest. Then we can venture forth in good condition.’ Ash said.

Back at Mission Control Tom heard all this with the usual delay, then replied,

‘Copy all that, Homer Base. This is Mission Control listening out.’

The four astronauts on the surface of Mars began their shutdown procedures, and then took an hour’s much needed rest.

In orbit around the red planet Hoshi began working with the robots on board. There now began a massive logistics plan. On board the Phoenix they carried supplies for the whole mission. The main components of this were food, water and oxygen. On top of all this there was the ‘farm’; various animals, among them chickens and quails, were contained within one of the modules that were fastened to Sarsen Two. One of these cells contained fish, but it would be quite some time before these could be transferred to the surface – if they could ever be subjected to the fierce experience of re-entry.

A strange meeting now took place on board the Phoenix. One Japanese scientist and three androids conferred about the next things to be done, and in what order. The strangeness about this meeting was that the attendees were not in the same room – they were scattered all over the ship. The androids had developed a very efficient communications system between themselves, enabling them to work as a single being, this was called the net. Hoshi worked with this system on the outward-bound journey; and had now become imbedded into the system. For her it was like telepathy. She was a very eminent and experienced scientist, but even she could not understand how it worked.

‘The water in cell one on top of Sarsen Two has not gone down as much as anticipated.’ Gerald reported,

‘The recycling system managed to gain a 92 per cent return, so we have not consumed as much as we thought we would. We needed to use some water in order to transfer from one cell to the other, but we still have a lot more than we thought we would.’

Hoshi Masuto sat in the captain’s chair in the Orion module at the end of the Blue Sarsen as she listened to this report that seemed to come from Gerald, but in effect could have come from any of the robots. She replied to the robot net by speaking aloud to herself,

‘That’s a good start; we have only just arrived, and we have a surfeit of water.’

‘We cannot put it anywhere into the Red Sarsen, there is far too much electronic machinery there, but we can convert the unfinished re-entry vehicle into a tanker and take it down to the surface of Mars instead of us going down in it.’

‘You mean to use the Ptolemy without anyone in it?’

‘Yes, it is on our net, so can perform on its own.’

‘Then how are we to get down there?’

‘Don’t worry, Doctor. It was always planned that three of us, and you will go onto the Martian surface. The re-entry vehicles Euclid, Pythagoras and Ptolemy are re-usable. All we have to do is replace the heat shield every time they return to the Phoenix, and they are good to go.’

Then the strange voice of Silver came over the net. He was working near the rear of White Sarsen on the almost complete Ptolemy re-entry vehicle,

‘Retro-fit almost complete.’

‘That was fast,’ Hoshi thought, ‘They must have been working on this before.’

She only thought this, she did not say anything.

‘Yes, Doctor. We decided during the landing phase of the Euclid and the Pythagoras that something had to be done and decided that you were all too involved to be distracted. So, we just got on with the conversion.’ A disembodied voice came back and made Hoshi jump.

She leaned forward to touch part of the command plinth in front of her,

‘Phoenix to Homer Base. Congratulations you guys. We are sending a drink down for you.’

Ash replied,

‘Thanks Hoshi. How’s that?’

‘We have too much water up here. We need to empty one of the bags, so the ‘S-classes’ have converted Ptolemy into a tanker to carry extra water down to you. As soon as the bag in Blue Sarsen is ready we will transfer it to the White Sarsen.’

‘Roger that, Hoshi. What about machinery? If we can dig a hole for the extra water, we may find some useful stuff on the way down.’

Gerald answered,

‘Sarsen Four will be sent down with myself, Stuart and machinery tomorrow Doctor Preston. There is some machinery inside Sarsen One, which is already with you.’

‘What about Sarsen Two? We have a tower down here with I don’t know what’s in it; I have seen the manifest for it, but we don’t understand any of it.’

‘That is because we are going to use what is in that to build an infrastructure on the surface.’ Gerald explained,

‘One thing we shall be building in an adjacent crater will be a small nuclear reactor to supply an almost inexhaustible supply of electricity for heating and lighting. In order to facilitate the rapid development of the Homer Base we shall be building roads first. This