Battleground Mars Read Free Page B

cop?”
    He nodded.
    “I was married, you’re right, but I didn’t have any kids. Didn’t have time. My husband was a cop too. He was killed in a drugs bust that went wrong.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “That’s ok, Rahm, I’m over the worst of it. Shall I carry on?”
    “Yes, please.”
    It was like turning on a switch. She spoke like a cop giving evidence in courst. “Mars is a smaller planet than Earth, less than thirty percent of our surface area. It only has one-tenth the mass, which means that it has a lower density and lower gravity, about one sixth of Earth. So we’ll be able to jump higher. Even in our pressure suits. We have to wear pressure suits, because of the low atmospheric pressure. We couldn’t survive for long without them.” She grinned. “Oh, and another thing, this Red Planet stuff? Forget it. The whole place is the color of sand and dust. The planet is divided into two hemispheres, north and south. The northern hemisphere is flat with just a few impact craters caused by asteroids. Most of it is below the determined zero elevation level. The southern hemisphere is very different, lots of mountains and highlands,”
    “Anything else I should know? What about our destination, Mars Base, what’s it like?”
    “Mars Base? Hmm, it’s a double skinned dome structure built on the planet’s surface, with...”
    He stopped her then. “Hold it! Did you say on the surface? I thought they built the Mars Base underground, so that it would be safer from the storms.”
    She nodded. “They did originally, yeah. But they outgrew it so fast that they decided they needed a bigger structure. The costs of building underground are huge, so they built the new dome on the surface. They still use the original underground cave for the air scrubbers. The new base is five miles away from the cave, it’s...”
    “Wait a minute, Kacy. I’m sorry to interrupt you again, but five miles away? You’re saying that they rely on a five mile long pipeline between the cave and the new dome for their life support?”
    “Well, yeah, that’s what it says. Why, what’s wrong with that?”
    “It doesn’t seem a good idea for the life support to be so vulnerable, five miles from your base on a hostile planet with enemy aliens running around on the warpath.”
    “I’m not sure the Taurons are that bad. But I guess you’re right, it does seem strange. Maybe they found it more convenient to build the dome closer to where the relief ships land. And the scrubbers are best protected underground, so they left them there. It makes some sense.”
    “Or maybe it was a way to save money.”
    She couldn’t see it. He thought grimly that she could be confronted with the problem sooner rather than later. Especially if the alien threat worsened and the Taurons cottoned on to the fundamental weakness in Mars Base. Five miles away!
    They had little trouble sleeping in the ship that was taking them to their new home for the next two years. The engineers who designed the ship had made efforts to deal with the problems of weightlessness. The main cabin revolved slowly to counter the worst effects of zero gravity. It wasn’t totally the same as on Earth, which was not a bad thing. Despite Kacy’s lesson about the environment of Mars, Rahm already knew that the gravity was lower than on Earth and the ship’s gravity was similar, at one sixth of the gravity they were used to. They were able to walk about normally and get used to their new home at the same time. When he awoke, he made his way to the ship’s tiny gym. Men and women were already working on the small range of exercise machines, and he found a vacant slot on a step machine that he attacked hard to work up a sweat. As slots became vacant he moved from machine to machine until he checked his watch and found that he’d spent an hour in the gym. It was enough, for he planned a similar session later. And every other day throughout the journey. He returned to the cabin he shared