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 Message Home  (12 ratings)by Stuart Atkinson Page 3 of 6 "The ERV is all fuelled-up and ready to fly. We check it daily,
just to make sure. Hard to believe that we'll be boarding it in
just under six months and leaving this place... maybe forever.
We try not to think about that day though; it still feels like
we only just got here, we have so much to do. A lifetime
wouldn't be long enough here...
"The greenhouse is functioning well, though, to be honest, I have to say that the plants are surviving rather than flourishing. But Sonia is confident it's just a matter of time before she gets the nutrient levels optimised, and then promises us a fit-for-a-king salad with all those fresh juicy tomatoes and apples the mission planners promised *us* when we signed up for this crazy trip... "Sonia is loving it here, as is everyone. Everyone has slipped into their surface roles easily and enthusiastically, I am delighted with, and proud of, my crew. Tori, our engineer extraordinaire, is having the time of her life fixing and mending the hundred things which go wrong each day... the words 'kid' and 'candy store' spring to mind when I see her burrowing into a panel, looking for the latest burntout circuit board... Matteo and Murray, my trusty cameraman for the night, continue to photograph and record every square centimetre of our landing site, and tell me that soon they'll be able to send back a full virtual reproduction of it for you all to roam around and explore from the comfort of your own armchairs... Doc Yuri... who some of you may have recognised earlier as our Secret Santa... continues to moan and groan about how little work he has to do, and I suspect that if we checked *his* Christmas list we'd find he'd asked for one of us to break a leg or something, just to give him something to do..." (camera shakes again) "As for myself... I'm just living in a dream, day after day. I have fallen in love with this planet, I truly have. The colours, the shapes, the textures which surround us... they're hypnotising, I wake up each morning impatient to get into my suit and outside, hating the thought of wasting even a single moment. Every day here is Christmas Day for me, I swear... Let me show you what I mean... Murray?" (Cdr Lewis' face vanishes off screen as camera swings away, panning left. Screen now shows view of landing area, the interior of Galle crater.) "Even in this half-light you can see why this location was chosen as our LZ. The crater floor ripples and undulates, as if it is covered with sand dunes... but they're not dunes. If you look over there, you'll see several ranges of cliffs, which are streaked and marked horizontally with alternating light and dark bands... these, like the dune features on the floor, are layers of sediment, material laid down by the flow of water over this area in Mars' distant past. The Global Surveyor probe, way back in 2000, was the first to spot features like this, features which proved Mars was once wetter and warmer than it is now, and MGS' cameras gave us our first real clue where we should go to look for life, living or extinct. MGS guided us here, and every time it dashes across our sky at night, a little, swift spark of light, we offer it our thanks. Okay, Murray, zoom in on the Tent, would you?" (view changes again to show centre of crater floor, where a small, dome-shaped object can be seen. It appears to be illuminated from within, and shadows can be seen moving within it. Multiple tracks lead away from it in all directions, showing where a rover has crisscrossed the crater floor during expeditions to and from the dome.) Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 Stuart Atkinson, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author. The author has submitted the work in accordance with and in agreement with the following Submission Guidelines. |
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