Walling - Olympus Mons

Cover image NASA/MOLA Science Team/O. DeGoursac, Adrian Lark

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Olympus Mons, by William Walling. ISBN: 978-1-62137-319-3 (softcover); 978-1-62137-320-9 (hardcover); 978-1-62137-321-6 (ebook).

Library of Congress number on file with the publisher.

Published 2013 by Virtualbookworm.com Publishing Inc., P.O. Box 9949, College Station, TX 77842, US. 2013, William Walling. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of William Walling.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

You will do your work on water,

an youll lick the bloomin boots

of im whats got it!

Rudyard Kipling

Barrack Room Ballads, 1892

We have a fountain in Burroughs now, a small tiled affair in the plaza leading to South Tunnels utility airlock. Water trickles down through the aqueduct pipeline, jets in the air, sparkles against the enclaves translucent roof-shield, and tinkles back into the pool. I sit beside my fountain and listen to the water music and reminisce. Between times I talk into a recorder, telling tall tales about whichever goings-on in the bad ol days strike me as most memorable.

Memories, so many memories...

Time has fast-forwarded past me at a fearsome rate, picking up speed as the E-years go by, and leaving me only memories, sorrows and the catch-as-catch-can pleasures of old age. Lorna went to her reward a dozen E-years ago, shortly after Jay came back from the homeworld with a civil engineering sheepskin in hand, on it the fancy Universitas Academica Edinensis hologram seal . Once the medics invented a way to reverse the Bevvinase Process a major breakthrough partly credited to workaholic Dr. Gloria Steinkritz-Jesperson Marsrats able to chivvy up the outrageous amount of scratch needed for round-trip passage to the Earth-Luna System could undergo a fix, spend an E-week or so in oxygen quarantine, and visit the homeworld. Youngsters think nothing of taking the plunge, but damn few of us old-timers elect to go that route.

Our son, Jay, put up with each months-long whirligig trajectory for the best of good reasons: to do his studies in Edinburgh, where his Marsrat pedigree gave him second-string celebrity status. He went right to work soons he got back, too. He lent a hand in designing the upland Jesperson Enclave to the east of us on the doorstep of Pavonis Mons, one of three giant volcanoes roosting in a neat line atop the Tharsis bulge. Jay also helped design the subsurface tube that links Jesperson and ol Burroughs.

Some time ago I took the tube over to the fancy new digs bearing my former work-partners name, mainly to pay my respects at the memorial pillar his twin sons erected to honor their famous dad. Nested in a larger crater, the new enclave is sleek n shiny, lots roomier than ours. The esplanade ring over there makes our midway look sort of cramped and old hat, a reminder that Burroughs is showing its age no surprise what with the wear, tear and hard times its seen. That can also be said of a creaky bag of bones and dried-up meat named Barnes, whos content to sit beside his fountain with only dreams and memories for company.

So many memories, mostly routine granted, yet salted with a choice few anything but ordinary. The nostalgia bubble pops in my head more n more often of late, sending me back in spirit to what began as just another breezy summer afternoon, then reversed course quicklike and turned into a red letter day that shook up Burroughs like it was in a blender, and woke us Marsrats from a long snooze.

My assigned work-partner, Jesperson, is a control freak. Whats more, he dotes on being a control freak, and isnt shy about boasting of his polar likes and dislikes Dont know about polar, but whatever the hell it is hes got more n plenty.

Slouched in the drivers seat, his mind on autopilot, Jess moved the joystick with two casual fingers, steering Crawler Two around the bigger boulders in our path, letting the cleated tracks mash smaller rocks. Through the forward transpex bubble I saw the curved way station roof begin tpoke above the too-close horizon. Jess, Im bushed, I complained one last time before losing the chance for good. What say we skip the video, truck on home?

Zero response.

As usual, I figured my partner had ignored my notion to skip the holovision whoop-de-do, and as usual I was wrong. The crawler rolled on another half-kilometer or so, jouncing and swaying over windrows of sand, crunching smaller rocks under the cleated tracks, when out of the blue he said, Got to see it, Barney.

Why? You wont learn a thing. Itll be like watching a movie youve seen before. Why not just listen in on audio whilst trucking for home?

Zero response.

I gave up, sat back in the co-driver seat and closed my eyes. The inauguration ceremony was slated to be piped sunward live for homeworld propaganda purposes live that is, if you dont count the light-minutes our lasercomm signal takes to bang the big dish in the far off Mojave, or its mates in the Gobi and elsewhere. The brain trust-elect at Burroughs, eighty-odd kilometers southeast of the volcano, had prepped for the transmission like itd kick off a royal coronation. Jesperson was hot to watch the doings. I was indifferent, but saw no point in complaining again about stopping to see the show.

Two-man teams like us sashay out to the volcano once each E-month, or on occasion oftener. We use a telescope to inspect the downfall stretch of pipeline tacked to the sky-high, corrugated face of the Olympus Rupes escarpment, and then check-out the windmills powering heaters in the holding tanks at the base of the cliffs, where our precious waters stored.

I opened my eyes when the crawler slowed, slewed on its port track and plowed twin furrows in the sand as it forged into the way stations stub-walled compound. Dont know if any ground-pounders in Seattle, Stuttgart or Sydney have ever heard of our way station, which is nothing much; a pair of connected, pressurized Quonset-type shelters half-buried in drifted, rust-colored sand a few klicks southeast of the volcano. Now and then, if a teams plumb tuckered out or its too late in the day to safely truck back to Burroughs, we overnight in the less than comfy hidey hole stocked with tools, belt and pressure-suit batteries, freeze-dried food, water, first-aid supplies and so forth. The way station also doubles-down as a lifeboat in an emergency.

Jesperson slewed Cee Two in a half-circle on its starboard track, parked and flipped switches to power-down. We took our time going through the wriggles and contortions it takes to get into vacuum gear, and as a matter of habit checked the vitals in each others life support readouts a drill no seasoned Marsrat would ever dare skip. Exiting through the crawlers small, coffin-sized airlock chamber one at a time, we crossed the short stretch of windblown sand to the way station airlock.

Inside pressure, I opened my faceplate lens, wincing when the sudden arctic chill hit my face, undogged and lifted off the suits headpiece, turned up the heat in the compartment, and went through the contortions and monkey-motions it takes to get out of a pressure-suit. Next came the battery exchange ritual. Plugging-in both sets of depleted energy cells for quick recharge, I swilled water and choked down one of the horse-pill caplets that replenish your electrolytes.

After doing his personal housekeeping duties same as me, Jesperson energized the aged holovision tank that gathers dust for E-weeks or sometimes months on end. Tuning in the pre-ceremony warmup doings at Burroughs, he watched for a few seconds and then, snide by nature, sang out, Hark, ye Earthworms, to a live broadcast from Botany Bay!