CostLess Cosmos

Needless to say, as soon as we found the deposit, we planted marker flags and a fence around it. Then, on video, I gave a walking tour, panning the camera around to show the sheer size of the landscape in front of me. It had occurred to me that people might claim that we were going to be "spoiling" the landscape with a mine, but my emphasis was that the planet was huge and we'd found a good spot.

The 'planet is huge' actually applies. Mars is only a third of Earth's mass, but without oceans, Mars and Earth have the same land surface area.

Over the video, I read the lawyers' verbiage... "BardSpace would like to kindly request that the UN establish a process for handling mineral rights claims, and insert first into that process our specific mining claim for the surveyed and marked locations."

After that, I moved on to item two, that we'd found extensive water as a subsurface permafrost layer. Our low-tech method was a common fence post auger machine we'd brought along, electric because of course there wasn't oxygen to burn anything. It looked odd from having a large copper radiator attached to the top; no electric motor could stay cool from the minimal Martian atmosphere.

Drilling post holes gave us 'core samples' in the form of dirt collected at various depths, but that wasn't particularly interesting according to the geologists, just a coarse and hard-edged beach sand chock full of peroxides, nasty crap that reacted with everything (especially water) to form extremely caustic/basic solutions.

Exposure to H2O2 is nasty, but we had catalytic filters that made the O2 bubble out of solution. It was the suspended peroxides we had to worry about - so we needed that water to wash everything down and get the dirt to be non-reactive and inert.

One of the things the book 'The Martian' didn't cover was how toxic Martian peroxides were.

After the first set of post holes to see what we were dealing with, we used some of the large diameter PVC we had to line the hole and then dropped a heating element down there.

Heating the permafrost sand let us pump out the water, which we ran through a distillation and RO filter setup to start refilling the ship's massive overhead reaction-mass tankage. It wasn't a high flow rate, but inside of a month we'd have a full load. On top of that, we had atmospheric condensers to pull whatever water vapor was in the almos-vacuum atmosphere, but that flow rate was even lower.

Thirdly, we'd had some big news, but it wasn't mine to announce.

Maria stepped in front of the camera (inside, of course), thanked her newlywed husband Dominic's forbearance. She then announced that she was pregnant. They had been married 5 or six weeks before we left, and she was at 10 weeks (out of 38). Our mission would last longer than that, so we congratulated her, and we set another goal post to look forward to seeing the first human in history born on another world.

Shri (as physician) had confirmed the pregnancy was healthy so far. That could change with radiation exposure, so we changed priorities and started working hard to get our shelters dug into the dirt deeper.

Space radiation has to go through 14.7 PSI of air to get to Earth's surface. That same pressure (and thus mass) is 33 feet of water, any scuba diver can tell you.

So, on Mars, we'd need 33 feet of water above us (density 1), or 10 feet of rock (density 3.3), or 6 feet of metal (density 5.5). Rock (sand) is easier to shovel than metal, but it doesn't stack.

Bricks were our end-goal, both on the Moon and Mars. Technically we could use sandbags for walls, but overhead, we'd need catenary arches of some kind of bricks.

We'd prepared many types of experimental brickmaking equipment, but it was aboard the Oakdale.

There wasn't a way to fix this. We could spend a month doing nothing but trying to give additional shelter to her unborn child, but in the end it might not matter or it might do more harm than good. Cosmic rays come from supernovae. They can hit you, and make a tiny hole. Or, they can hit a shield, split into a lot of subatomic shrapnel, and make lots of tiny holes. The jury was out as to which was better/worse.

Maria didn't want to be treated differently.

There was a lot of concern she privately expressed to me about being seen as 'the weaker sex' and all that baggage, when in reality she was muscularly much stronger than I was and had her own agenda for sets of experiments we had planned out.

So, the experiments went on as planned.

7 weeks later, the Oakdale arrived.

Chapter: Organized Chaos and Mining

The Oakdale arrived in orbit, and by design, stayed there revolving away since we'd need it to go home.

The first Elm ship came down and we had a party of sorts, each person posing with me in front of the "Seaborg Base" sign. The background showed the Elmdale and the beautiful varied landscape to the horizon. Out of view of these shots, a super-tall flagpole topped the hill as a safety measure in the new landscape. High up, a rod-stiffened Canadian flag stretched out, as well as the green and blue Seaborg Base flag designed to contrast with the mostly-red landscape.

Way up above the flagpole was a large light-blue balloon filled with pure O2 oxygen, which was abundant and easy to separate from CO2, and lighter enough to make a balloon float. Granted, we could have used hydrogen, but H2 had a nasty tendency to leak out of everything it was put into, and it was more simple to just have a bigger O2 balloon.

Once the ferrying down of cargo containers (about 500 of them) started in earnest, there was an organizational hassle to put them in the right order in the pre-arranged place. Our 100-person living quarters consisted of several containers inside inflatable structures.

Extra insurance about air pressure is a Very Good Thing.

Each container had 5 rows of triple bunk-beds, 15 people per container, 8 containers, plus a container with bathrooms and showers.

The fact that we'd not planned for men's and women's showers was the source of some consternation, but after a while people just got used to each other. There were more women than men, so it wasn't really a problem.

No one had time for sex anyway -- work shifts were 16 hours a day. Six shifts of 4 hours each meant two sleep periods and the rest doing something. Everyone was getting hazard pay for every hour worked, and there was a crapton of essential tasks to get to self-sufficiency.

Mess hall and kitchen, meeting rooms, labs, greenhouses, brick kilns, water distillation equipment for shower and mars-dust rinse water, all that stuff had to get set up. The inflatable structures we'd brought went up quickly, but we had flat-pack mostly-metal furniture that had to be set up, too, lifted directly into orbit from Sweden.

With a higher percentage of oxygen in our air, we couldn't have much in terms of flammables. The inflatable itself was a plastic that could ignite if we let the O2 level get too high (it was monitored carefully). N2 and Ar were plentiful enough as we ran fractionating air compressors, but it took a while to build those up and then fill spare tanks.

About 2 weeks in, everyone was moved in enough to start research trips to explore the countryside, more than our few trips out prospecting had done previously. The Earth-designed smelting-steel works didn't go as planned and that needed quick-thinking and machine-shop work, and that used up a bunch more of our 3-D printer wire than we planned.

Now, I have to step back here and note I was a total n00b when it came to mining. But, you live, you learn: scoop, move, melt, cast, roll. Steel, we needed a lot of, to make shelters that would shield us from cosmic rays. To get the I-beams and welded sheet steel for a large habitat, we had to get the process going, or no one would want to stay here for more than a couple of years lest they get a higher dose and they'd have to worry about increased later-life cancer risks.

Separating ore from spoil with loaders and dump trucks, it flowed past spinning magnets and we soon had more raw iron than we could melt. Still, we built a huge pile of it so we could up our prod rate later.

The chemical processing to turn impurities into usable chemicals required other rocks, so the geologists were busy prospecting for rocks with fluoride salts, boron, lithium, magnesium, and whole mess of other useful stuff. That came, but without the steel reaction vessels, we couldn't do much.

Exploration turned to scientific inquiry, and alumniosilicates yielded enough raw silicates to make glass and enough alumina to grind and polish a mirror. The first 2 meter telescopes on Mars worked nicely but couldn't track because we didn't have enough small electric motors.

Many things were going into our, "we didn't think this through enough" shopping list for another delivery from Earth.

What got the most surprise, socially, I think, was that I slept in the same kind of bunks that the rest of the crew did. They noticed things like that. Here I was, one of the richest humans anywhere, and I was bunking down in a smelly container alongside them, eating, hanging out, working alongside, and even showering near them.

The fact that there were more women on this trip than men, by my decision, and that I was in such close proximity to them, led to a lot of rumors about me 'fraternizing' with the crew. Given the lack of available shower water (once a week, 5 gallons each), we weren't exactly erotic to each other. The idea of showering 'near' someone wasn't sexy, it was an absolutely hurried rush to get all your bits clean given the minimum amount of water you could possibly use.

Most of the women cut their hair to crew-cuts almost instantly once in space since it did nothing but get in the way and turn greasy. I knew once we had more water, we could work on that, but it took a while. Our first priority was reaction mass to get off in an emergency, and only second to that were considerations of smelling nice.

Still, I caught an eyeful, living amongst them. Wearing a stuffy spacesuit a lot of the day meant wanting to not wear heavy clothes the rest of the time, and they didn't. Many of them just wore jog-bra's or (if they were small-chested enough), just t-shirts. I didn't object.

Chapter: Connundrums

Five weeks after landing, I got a text that Dr. Shri wanted to see me, so I took a break from helping negotiate between engineers fighting over who would get brick-kiln priority. Having to duck out, I just told them to flip a coin and got suited up to head over to the clinic, a set of hooked-together containers with what passed for a base hospital inside.

Dr. Shri greeted me as I came in and helped me get my suit off. The pressure suits we had weren't great, but they were cheap and fast to get our hands on. Trouble was, getting them off was a giant hassle, so people wore them too long, and they stank.

Once I was settled in her chair in my skivvies (long underwear) and had some coffee (a luxury I made sure we had), she started in. "So, I have some odd questions, and I need your truthful answers. I must mention, I'm recording this conversation so you might want to sit more formally."

My ears perked up, and I did, sitting up. Conversations that started this way couldn't be good.

"Good. Just answer as truthfully as you can, no matter if it's embarrassing or seemingly too personal, okay?"

I nodded. I trusted her, but something was wrong. She wanted me to say something, so I said, "Okay. I agree."

"One. What is today's date?"

I told her.

"Two. What is your name?"

I told her that, too, though she knew it.

"Three. You are married to Ellen Rand, with whom you have a daughter, correct?"

"Correct." We'd married when Kermit was 3 months old, a quiet ceremony with mostly just what family and old friends we felt closest to.

"Four. You are the biological father of Ellen's daughter, correct?"

"Yes. I mean, I have no reason to think otherwise."

"Five. When was the last time you had sexual intercourse, approximately?"

Wow. Way out of bounds, normally, but she's a doctor. I thought. "We left Earth... a little over 10 weeks ago. So, about 10 weeks ago, possibly plus a day, I'd have to ask Ellen."

"Six. Have you had intercourse since that time?"

"No." I was puzzled.

"Seven. Have you at any point sexually ejaculated in the physical presence of any other person?"

I thought, and said (feeling odd because it was a personal question), "On the trip, I had my own bunk room. I masturbated there, alone. Once we landed and I had to share sleeping quarters with 14 other people, I... started masturbating alone in my rack, maybe once every 2 or 3 days? I've tried to be really quiet so I don't disturb the others, but I don't know if anyone has heard me.... I may have heard, uh, other crewmates, doing the same things, maybe, but we all are pretty private and adult about it - no jokes or anything at least. So... your question was, in the same room? Yes, definitely. In the awareness of others? I tried hard not to be. I guess, I can say no one has interrupted me or otherwise acknowledged it. It's private stuff."

"Understood. What method did you use to masturbate?"

"Kind of personal."

"Just answer the question."

"I had... have... a set of very-soft socks. I usually use those. It's not great, but, it's not easy out here..."

She interrupted me, "That's fine, that's fine. What happens to those socks when you're done?"

"I go to sleep, usually. I get them out of my sleeping bag in the morning, I guess, and they go into the laundry. All our clothing has our initials, because, you know, shared laundry."

"Okay." She sighed. "I am obliged by the laws of Canada to tell you something. We take blood tests every week, monitoring for radiation damage and all manner of things, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Two weeks ago, blood screening revealed that Catherine Helmann is pregnant. Somehow, she'd slipped by previous testing. We believe she is currently about 4 weeks along. This is old enough to reveal fetal cells in maternal blood, and thus we have genetically determined that you are the father."

I was stunned. I just sat there. My face must have shown it.

"Uh..."

She waited for me to process this.

"I didn't do that."

"I believe you. However, it remains a fact."

There were no words for a minute for me. I racked my brain trying to come up with any other way this could have happened, but it only came down to one thing. "She did this... on purpose?"

"Suspecting this was not your choice and before I told her anything, I gave her a test. The test is to determine if a person is a psychopath or not."

My blinking must have gone sideways with my head shaking, trying to understand it. "She seems normal...?"

"Yes, well, most of them do. Knowing what to look for, body language, iris dilation, heart-rate increases, etc., I have some excellent diagnostic tools available to me. You should know, you are financing things."

"I have no idea what your budget is."

"Regardless. Catherine is a psychopath. She's very high-functioning. It's a lot like autism in that a person has to learn how to act 'normal' and effectively pretend to have the same emotional responses as other people. Fundamentally, psychopathy is defined as profound absence of emotional compassion. Instruments don't lie, and I've had some detective work done that backs this theory up. So. You're off the hook, sort-of."

"Oh," I sighed a little, "that doesn't make me feel better, though."

"As a person, yes. As the leader of this expedition, things are getting more complicated." She took in a breath. "She doesn't know that I know about her pregnancy. She might know I suspect her of psychopathy. I'm consulting with experts on Earth on how to handle this."

"She had to have known, once she's pregnant, she'll begin showing eventually."

"My team - on Earth - has a few theories. Theory A, she could be in love with you. Psychopaths can feel love, they just don't have mirror neurons to feel empathy. Anyway... Option B, she could be envious of Maria. Option C, she could be a gold-digger looking to get a handle on your vast wealth. Option D, this is an attempt to get attention. It's not commonly known that I have the tech on-planet to determine paternity just from a small maternal blood sample, so it could be someone else she's targeting. Option E, it's an attempt to embarrass you and she's being coerced or paid. Lastly, F? F is no good. Theory F is that she's going to kill one or more of us, combined with one of the previous letters."

I nodded. "We have no jail."

"Correct."

"Are there... have you looked through her comms to see if someone is coercing her?"

"Nothing sticks out."

"What the everlasting Fuck do I do about this..."

"Whatever it is, you need to tell Ellen immediately. The longer you wait, the worse it will be."

I thought about that. "Can we call her now? Like, right now? I love her so much, I don't want to lose her..." I was spitballing. Just as soon as I said it, the stupidity seemed obvious. Light speed delays meant delay between question and answer would be about 6 minutes, given our orbital positions.

"We can. Better if you call, tell her you have some news, I'll arrange for her to watch an encrypted version of the video of this conversation, and... she can answer your questions then, maybe."

"And... what do we do about Catherine?"

"I have suitable abortifacients in stock, should she decide that is the correct option for her. Ethically, we cannot influence that decision in any way, it's both immoral and illegal. The political fallout from trying that would be bigger than the actual pregnancy. In fact, I'm disinclined to allow her to have an abortifacient even if she asks, or maybe only with a bunch of video evidence that it's genuinely asked for. In any of the extortion scenarios, she could claim you asked her to do it. Or, to make someone appear guilty of harming her. Remember, psychopaths typically lack remorse."

"Wow."

We sat there for a moment.

I asked, "Is there any possible way that this is an accident?"

She considered. "Does she sleep near you?"

"Two down, really, no."

"We use Mars water for laundry, it has peroxides in it, we have to tone those down, but still, it's pretty caustic. Nothing survives in that. No way your garments transferred semen to hers in the laundry."

"Proof of intent."

"Are your socks different? Is that one different?"

"I marked a dot on the end of those pairs, so I don't wear them, if that's what you mean. It's not obvious. My crew-number is on them - pretty simple, it's ONE. She'd know which ones were mine in the laundry stream."

She chuckled, "I get your point. Boss-Socks."

We turned off the recording equipment, and she let me use her soundproofed 'office' to call Ellen. I sent the emergency 'Use High Secrecy' word as a text and got back, "30 minutes."

I waited, contemplating what we could do.

"Kevin! I'm in the closet, we've got this going as burst mode. I'm ready, whatever it is you have to tell me. I called Jason lawyer and gave him the 'drop things come here now secretly' word. Whatever it is, I love you. Kermit loves you, too. Francine has him outside. Over."

As I watched, I'd been recording myself so we had continuous time coverage of me since Shri told me the news. I was paranoid.

I said, "Ellen, I'm going to send you another video, of the doctor telling me some kind of shocking news - not my health, don't worry - just... shocking. I'll summarize here. It's... kind of a doozie. Turns out, one of our crew is a psychopath. Not like a murderous one, that we know of yet, but... yeah. She doesn't have a conscience, or empathy. So,... Well, since we've been apart - with me here and you there - I've masturbated. You know, because. This woman deliberately found one of my socks, that I used and which had my sperm in it, and got herself pregnant with it. We have so many cameras on us, frankly, I'm amazed she managed it. Anyway, she's pregnant, about 4 or 5 weeks along now. We're not sure if it's part of a plan to do worse things to us, or to blackmail, or what. So. Blackmail doesn't work if I we're honest with each other, so... Here. I. Am. I'm telling you. Yeah, hun, I jerk off. I jerk off 3 times a week, maybe. And, miss you. I have never had any sexual contact with this woman. I've never been unconscious or drugged. So, it's pretty clear."