The Astronaut's Mom

EVA, At Last

PIPER: Mom, Attached to this message, please find a hiking course from my first EVA. Some of the footage will eventually go out to the public, but this version of it is just for you and Dad. I wanted you to experience, as exactly as possible, what I did, so it's got all the audio, all the video, and every time I looked around. You don't have to jog to watch this. Just bounce gently on your toes. That's more like Martian walking, anyway.

The person I was with was Jerry, so... Mom and Dad, meet my boyfriend.

Jack was downstairs in the home theater area, playing a game, so Anne brought her laptop down to him and showed him the message. He got very excited, and urged her to download it to their treadmill immediately. Once it was in, Jack stood up on the user pad, and Anne took a seat in the observer area. The holographic displays covering the front third of the room seemed to dissolve for a moment, and then they were watching an airlock door open, and when Jack bounced slightly on his heals, the image started moving. Jack kept bouncing, slowly and evenly, and the video kept rolling. The sky was pink. The land was every shade of red and black.

"How are you doing?" Jerry asked, solicitous. His voice was distinct in the speaker of her helmet.

Piper turned to give him a look, but realized when she looked at him that their faceplates were reflective, and he couldn't see her face anyway. "I'm fine, Jerry."

"Let me know if you need to go in."

"I will."

"I just want to make sure you..."

"Jerry!"

"Sorry."

They were standing outside the Hab. They turned to look back at it. You could no longer tell, by looking that the Hab was built from reused space capsules. The only portion of the true structure that was visible was the airlock door itself. Just over its frame was an archway of reddish brick or cinder block. Additional bricks formed a skirt wall around the arch, and then beyond that, the Hab was buried under loose regolith. There was nothing fancy about this construction. The original structure was simply buried.

They walked away and downslope. As Piper looked around, Anna and Jack could see that the Hab was built along the wall of a shallow canyon. The canyon appeared U-shaped, with the walls sloping away at what appeared to be 30 degree angles. The floor of the canyon flattened out, about a football field wide.

"Water carved?" Piper asked, gesturing at the low point down the middle of the canyon.

"At least partially," Jerry replied, "Once you sweep away the ever-present dust, you can see the depositional patterns in the sandstone."

They passed the greenhouses, which emerged from the rubble long and narrow in a row of four and reached toward the middle of the canyon. Piper pointed upward at the Sun. "The greenhouses have a southeastern exposure, which helps them gather heat early in the day and avoids overheating in the evening, which believe it or not, is an actual concern."

Then they left the greenhouses behind and walked toward the mouth of the canyon. In the distance was a wide, flat plane, extending to a horizon that seemed noticeably closer than it ought to be.

After about ten minutes, they approached something small, shining reflectively in the sun. It was about the width of a large man's hand, and as they squatted down to get a better view, they could see it was a clear dome. The inside of the globe was foggy with moisture, and the contents of the dome were a deep aquamarine color.

"Tell me about this, Jerry," Piper demanded eagerly.

"Well this has been here longer than the first colonists," he began. "It was originally a NASA-funded experiment, in fact, dating back to 2014 under the N. I..."

"What's inside, Jerry?!" Piper interrupted, eagerly.

"Sorry. Inside is a combination of cyanobacteria and algae--an arctic lichen, basically. Experiments on Earth demonstrated that certain species of lichen from the Arctic and Antarctic could survive in simulated Martian conditions, so to prove it, they sent this little guy up with the next rover that had room, which happened to be the Clark in 2024. Under the dome is an auger that drilled down into the permafrost and sealed itself at a depth of about 2 meters. The pressure of drilling caused the permafrost to melt a little, thus wetting the soil. The lichen colony inside was then released into the enclosed space, and has been growing on Martian soil, ever since. The exciting thing about this is that these guys are photosynthesizers, so the atmosphere under this dome is enriched in oxygen, which we would see, ironically, if we were back at the Hab, where we could display the data."

The video froze. Jack and Anne both started. Embarrassed, Jack realized that he had forgotten to walk. He grinned at Anne and complained, "She's standing still! Why make it a hiking course if she's not going to hike? It could have just been a simple video."

"Maybe she worries that since you retired, you never get your butt off the couch," Anne joked. She waved emphatically, and Jack resumed his slow march. The video moved forward again.

"Are there any more of these?" Piper prompted.

"Yes, but this is the oldest. Each human mission has placed new ones as follow up experiments with different species, larger spaces, different exposures and soils, etc. There's been a lot of success. We now have a good idea of what kind of extremophile organisms will survive on Mars with minimal help. We're now ready to try something on a larger scale."

Piper's gaze switched to a manmade structure lodged securely into the wall of the canyon about 20 feet up and forty feet from where they stood. It was a surveyor's stake with a green flag on the top. The green stood out vibrantly against the red. Her gaze followed a line of such stakes that extended up canyon as far as she could see.

"We're going to dome over this entire canyon," she said, with relish.