The first pink light of dawn began to fill the dome as Jamie scrubbed and shaved, then grabbed a quick breakfast of hot oatmeal, steaming coffee, and the inevitable vitamin supplement capsule- alone in the wardroom until the others began drifting in to begin the day.
He said a few brief good mornings as he made his way toward the storage lockers where the hard suits were kept. The dome felt different now. No longer the same place it had been when they had first landed. It was more than the mere fact that a dozen men and women had been living and working here for thirty-four days. Nearly five weeks ago the dome had been strange, scary, a new and untried womb of plastic and cold metal. Now it was home, safe and warm, the smell of coffee wafting even out to the lockers. Nearly five weeks of working and planning, arguing and joking, eating and sleeping, had given the dome a distinct human aura. The floor was scuffed from their boot treads. Jamie could feel the emotions that drenched the very air. It’s not the sterile dome full of equipment it once was. Not anymore. Our spirit fills this place now, he thought.
And today we leave this behind to go out to the canyon. No wonder I had an anxiety dream.
He passed the little greenhouse area where Monique Bonnet knelt beside the plant beds, nurturing them like a loving mother beneath the brightly glowing lamps. Even with the morning sun streaming in through the dome’s curved wall they kept the full-spectrum lights on all during the daylight hours. The transparent plastic of the dome stopped most of the infrared in the sunlight and all of the ultraviolet.
“How’s the farm?” Jamie asked.
Monique looked up from the big trays, rubbing a red smudge from her cheek. “Quite well. See?” She gestured to the little green shoots poking out of the pink sandy ground. “Before we return to Earth I will be able to make you la salade verte.”
“Still feeding them Perrier?”
“Of course. What else?”
Jamie smiled and Monique smiled back. She had taken over the management of the little garden, giving the plants Martian water and motherly care. Ilona and Joanna had left it mostly to her, despite the duties spelled out in the mission plan. Mars must agree with her, Jamie thought. Monique’s figure looks trimmer than it did when we first landed.
Does she really look better or am I just horny? Jamie asked himself. He did not feel especially driven. Tony must be lacing our food with sex suppressants, despite what he says. Probably a good thing, he tried to convince himself.
Looking at the wide trays filled with reddish dirt and green shoots, Jamie realized: We could live on Mars indefinitely, if we had to. If we had brought enough seeds, we could have started a regular farm, using Martian water and pulling in oxygen and nitrogen from the air. We could grow enough food to survive in this dome, turn it into a real base. A permanent home.
The next mission. That’s what we’ll have to do. Bring enough seeds to start a self-sufficient farm. Use the local resources. We can do that. We know it now.
Attitudes among the explorers had changed over their five weeks on Mars. Jamie was still the outsider, the loner, but now it was because he was the tacitly acknowledged leader of the group. He was no longer the afterthought, the last-minute replacement. Most of the work being done by the eleven others was aimed now at making a success of the coming traverse to Tithonium Chasma.
Patel was still surly, angry that his excursion to Pavonis Mons had been cut short. He kept himself busy analyzing the samples they had taken during their brief foray. The dating they got from the uranium-lead samples did not agree with that derived from the potassium-argon measurements. Patel and Naguib were spending all their free time trying to find out why. Vosnesensky, at first dour and morose about the considerable change in schedule, had gradually warmed up to the idea. Over the past two weeks he had become almost jovial. There was a fun-loving man underneath all that responsibility, Jamie realized.