Space Stations

“All right, you win, Jack. One condition, though. You will not risk your life unnecessarily and you will do your utmost to come back safely, with or without any surviving members of Ares. Don't forget, we still need you to land Valkyrie at our own site and complete the mission. You are still the best pilot within tens of millions of kilometers.”

Eriksen knew that Boutillier might not follow his injunctions but, by Mighty Odin, he had to tell him.

It took one more orbit of Phobos around Mars before Hoerter gave Boutillier a reluctant

“go” sign. Hoerter cautioned him that the safety window was brief and that Boutillier ought to head back at most within an hour of landing, no matter what he found there.

There was no telling what a fierce dust storm, with wind velocities sometimes running up to several hundred kilometers an hour, could do to the propulsion system of Valkyrie, even in the low air density of Mars.

While descending to the ground, Boutillier had the time to indulge in his secret concerns about Mars and its moons, most of which he had not shared with his crewmates. For one thing, he had always wondered if the Martian moons were entirely natural. As an undergraduate at the U.S. Naval Academy, he had studied celestial mechanics for its own elegant beauty. He loved the subject. It was clear to him that those two Martian moons should not be there—not by an act of nature, anyway. For one thing, if they had been two passing asteroids acquired by the gravitational field of Mars, why weren't their orbits significantly eccentric? At the time of the capture by Mars, their orbits must have been hyperbolic; even stipulating the presence of another much more massive asteroid at the time of the capture to provide the required perturbation, the orbital eccentricities for Phobos and Deimos should have remained close to unity, i.e., close to being hyperbolic.

He had often wondered if those two moons had naturally been placed in those neat orbits. Had they been put there artificially? That would imply the intervention of intelligent beings, perhaps some millions of years ago; the orbits of Phobos and Deimos seemed to be ideally suited as space stations for inhabitants of Mars. He was hoping that a thorough exploration of Phobos and Deimos—and Mars itself— would in time answer those questions.

That led to another question he had been harboring for a long time. Was the disaster that befell the first expedition seven years ago naturally caused? Or, was some sort of ancient defense system against invading ETs, meaning creatures like us, activated after all those years? He had to admit, however, that the idea of an ancient Martian strategic defense system being activated from time to time sounded more than a little far-fetched and even paranoid.

Had he voiced any of those thoughts before he had been selected, the selection board would probably have rejected him for being crazy. But now that he was by himself, these questions began gnawing at him. He shook his head vigorously to expel such negative thoughts. It did not matter if there was a Martian defense system working against all intruders. His job was to go down to the surface and rescue Ares' crew—if he could find anyone alive.

The dust had not quite cleared up in the landing area, but Boutillier could make out his immediate surroundings, including the Ares. He was already suited up. Without wasting a second upon landing, he opened the hatch, stepped onto the ground and closed the hatch behind him immediately, to prevent dust from getting inside Valkyrie. The ground was powdery with brownish-reddish sand. After several days on Phobos, where the gravitational acceleration downward was practically nonexistent, the one third Earth normal “g” of Mars felt down right homey.

It took only a few minutes to traverse the short distance to the entrance hatch of Ares. It was tightly shut as expected. He had brought some instruments to force it open, but he decided first to knock on it to see if anyone would respond. After several heavy knocks, he waited a short while and prepared to bang on the door again. It was then that he heard a faint sound from inside.

“Jumping catfish, there is someone alive on board!” Boutillier's heart began beating faster in excitement. He did not have to wait long before the hatch opened before him, revealing another space suit clad figure at the entrance. Masked by the heavily tinted visor, the face could not be seen clearly. Boutillier turned on his communicator and started speaking in a rapid-fire fashion, so impatient was he to learn what had happened.

He was disappointed that his opposite number did not respond and then realized that the wavelength for his space suit communicator was probably not set at the right frequency to talk to someone wearing an Ares space suit.