Chapter 9

Boy, the farm sure looked different with the chain-link fence installed. Of course, the fence didn't surround the whole farm, that would be a ridiculous waste. However, the fence did encompass the launch pad were Emily V was stored and the barn and house. We had fixed up the house, and even Joe Holmes didn't raise an eyebrow when Jenny and I moved in. It was really silly for us to live in town and commute every day to the farm to work on our Mars mission project.

Jenny and I had independently calculated how much fuel and air we would need for the trip and had come up with the same numbers. Actually, to save space, we planned to use pure oxygen at 5 psi for our breathable atmosphere, and we were going to use pure oxygen to burn our propane fuel. Setting up the valving was kind of tricky, but an expert from the gas supplier helped us work out and install what we needed for both the oxygen and the propane.

We decided to use Emily V for our first trip to Mars, but we could not get a full supply of consumables stored within the shuttle shell, so we settled on a separate pod trailing behind the shuttle shell attached with a rigid link. Food consisted of MREs stored within the shell, and we had fitted every available space with water tanks. We realized that it would be foolish to take showers with the limited amount of water we could take with us, so the shower just became another storage area. The stove was removed, but we did keep the refrigerator. All of the seating was removed except for the two "captain's chairs" at the front of the cabin. Only one bed was left, but we decided on the luxury of dispensing with bunks and keeping our familiar shared bed.

It took us almost a year to get ready, but we decided to go, timing our launch for the first day of March. I know, that was a silly way to choose a day, but our propulsion system let us leave at any time, the limitation being that Earth and Mars would both be on the same side of the sun.

Jenny had graduated and was now a full fledged physicist, so we had a chemist and a physicist in our crew. I was also a pretty good amateur astronomer, so that science was covered, too. We were missing a geologist to make a complete team, but we were on our honeymoon! Yes, Jenny finally decided that she had stalled around long enough, so we had a quiet wedding with just a few friends. I could tell that Emily was disappointed that her daughter was not going all out for the wedding, but Jenny said that she rather spend the time working on the Mars trip.

We left at 10:00 AM so that there would be plenty of light for the TV cameras. This time the networks, Fox, and CNN took us seriously and had cameras and full broadcasting teams there for our launch. They all felt that they had been burned the last time when they ignored us, so they made a point of being on hand this time. We also had quite a crowd of spectators, even though we had made sure that everybody understood that there would be no big fireworks like they could see at a NASA launch.

Yes, the ship, us, and everything associated with the trip had been treated so that we would have a minimum likelihood of taking Earth germs to Mars. Of course, we couldn't be 100% certain that we were germ free, but we tried the best we could manage. We certainly spent enough money on the fumigation process, as Joe was heard to say.

We launched right on schedule and scooted to 120 miles altitude as fast as possible. On the edge of space, we figured to be out of everybody's way as we made our final preparations for the trip. We had added a rocket poking what amounted to straight down through the aluminum grid so that we could lock on the sun with our gravity shield and blast directly in the optimum direction to meet Mars about five days from now.

We fired off the main rocket and let it blast. Contrary to everybody else's rockets through space, ours was going to run all of the time, steadily accelerating us toward Mars. Half-way there, we were going to flip over and lock onto Mars so that we could decelerate. We should rendezvous with Mars between four and six days after leaving Earth. We could not be sure because we really didn't know how fast we would be going with the new configuration. There was no way to test without going to Mars, so that was what we were doing now.

We turned out to move a hell of a lot faster than we had expected. On the second day, I had to crank back on the speed because we were approaching a significant percentage of the speed of light! This was a lot faster than we expected to be going, so the gravity shield must have some side effects we were unaware of. If this effect turns out to be reproducible, we should be able to make use of the FTL drive much sooner than I had expected.

Well, back to the Mars trip, right now. I made the flip and locked on Mars and started our deceleration. Since we were moving faster than we had expected, Mars was not exactly where we anticipated finding it, but it was close enough that I did not have to strain to aim for it. I was a little bit scared by traveling this fast, so I tried to slow us down as rapidly as possible. I was concerned that if I had made too many errors in my calculations, we were going to make a big splash in the Martian sandbox.

Well, it turned out that I needn't have worried. We slowed right down and made a gentle approach to Mars. We had no particular target on Mars, we were biased toward the poles as that is where everybody expected to find water, but that was not too important to us on this trip. Mainly, we were interested in proving feasibility of making the trip. The next trip would involve a search for the best place to start a colony.

"Honey, did you see that?"

We were sweeping low over a canyon looking for a good place to land when Jenny asked her question. "No, I missed it. What was it?"

"I swear it looked like those buildings carved into the cliff walls in Petra, Jordan. Can we loop back and take another look?"

"Sure, it will only take a minute to get turned around ... OK, I've the controls on autopilot. Tell me where to look."

Jenny grabbed my arm and pointed. "Son of a bitch! The resemblance is amazing! If I didn't know better, I'd think that we were back on Earth! Let's land as close as we can and get some pictures, at least."

We landed and put on our space suits. We took along a digital camera in a special rig that let us take pictures even while we wore our spacesuit gloves. I took several pictures with Jenny standing near the carving for scale. We walked close to the carvings, and I noticed that there was a doorway. I couldn't resist and went through the opening. I moved my flashlight around to shine on the walls. They were covered by something that looked like writing. I called for Jenny to join me, and she was just as impressed as I was.

We spent several hours photographing every inch of the carvings. We photographed each segment from several angles to make sure that every one of the marks showed up. At one place, there was a portrait that looked like a demon or monster out of the paintings from the Renaissance showing the creatures described in the Biblical Book of Revelations. Hell, it was scary looking, with a head sort of human-like, the forepart of the body looking like a lion, and the rear part looking like an octopus or squid. Shit, I'd hate to meet that thing in a dark alley.

When we finished photographing the walls of the chamber, we walked around looking for more doors that might lead deeper into the cliff, but we didn't find any thing else. Eventually, we gave up and went back to our ship.

I was certain that we would not be believed when we got home. I wanted to pinpoint the exact location of the carvings, so I lined up very carefully directly over them and flew straight up. I wanted to get high enough so that there would be no problems in re-finding the area. None of the charts we had of Mars showed this area in any kind of detail, so I assumed that the carvings were missed in the satellite imaging of the surface around 10 years ago.

We returned to the ship and resumed our cursory search of the surface, looking for obvious signs of water. We never found any, but we did find an interesting place to land. The area looked like there was a series of foundation walls projecting from the sand. They looked to us to be too straight and regular to be natural, so we landed to examine them more closely. We also made a series of photographs as we flew over.