Read Online Glory on Mars by Kate Rauner - Free Book Online Page B

said, bowing to the screen as he
braced on the table. "I'm only half Martian this sol."
    Minutes passed again.
    "I'm sure the 'American Mission' knows best," said
Ruby, a Polynesian Kiwi from New Zealand, the jumpship pilot from
the S-1 Pioneers. "Coming to show us how to run Kamp."
    "Come on, Ruby," Daan said, his mouth ticked up at
one corner. "This is a party."
    Emma turned away. "Where did that come from?" she
whispered.
    "Liz is Canadian," Claude said indignantly, straight
into the imager. "And I'm German."
    "Shtart schpeaken vith a zicker accent," James said.
"Zo people know." Claude glared at him.
    "Joke, Herr Professor. It's a joke."
    "Be pleasant everyone," Liz said, looking down and
running a hand across her mouth as she whispered.
    James turned back to the imager with his grin
intact.
    "Okay, so New Year's Eve for us Martians isn't two
weeks away. It's only mid-jaar for Mars and our next New Year's
is..." James calculated in his head. "Ten months... Can we use
months when Deimos orbits once a sol and Phobos three times faster?
The year - 'scuse me, the jaar - on Mars starts on the northern
spring equinox, orbital designation Ell Sub Ess Zero degrees... sol
zero..." He wrote with a finger in the air in exaggerated
sweeps.
    "Over three hundred sols away. That's a long time
without a holiday. When's the next party?"
    They waited quietly through the transmission lag,
sipping from their wine bulbs.
    "We still use months." Asynchronous communications
were hard to keep track of. Daan's response was from a few comments
back.
    "And weeks. They're just too handy to drop. Seven
sols a week, four weeks a month, twenty-three months a jaar, plus
one short month..." Daan stopped, listening again. Ruby stood
behind him, arms folded across her chest. Emma thought someone was
cajoling her from off-screen.
    "You'll like month twenty-four. We figure the last,
odd-ball week to be three and a half sols of festival before we
reset the calendar at Elle Sub Es Zero.
    "It'll be easier to talk when you drop into orbit.
For now, congratulations on the engine burn." The two groups of
settlers went back to their separate parties.
     
    ***
     
    "I've been wasting time," Emma said the next sol at
breakfast. "I should be viewing the Mars feeds, not Earth net
entertainments."
    "We all read Kamp's daily summary," Liz said.
    "Not the same thing at all." Emma shook her head. "I
should know more than an Earthside fan. For example, each bay is
constructed with a pond. That's for independent water storage in
case one pond leaks, and they're all part of the recycling system,
but we'll also use them to raise fish. Which pond should we start
with? It's an engineering question as much as a farming
question."
    "I see what you mean," Liz said.
    "Maybe we've all gotten numb on this trip," Claude
said. "It's time to be proactive. I'm going to pull up the wiring
status in Kamp's Spine." He unwrapped his feet from the chair legs
and drifted to a hull outlet to plug in his pad. He floated there,
one foot hooked under a handhold, as he scrolled through the
records.
    "I'll send my jumpship simulations to Ruby and Luis
and get their evaluations," James said.
    Emma opened the detailed Kamp logs, but didn't look
at fish ponds first. The settlers were well ahead of Colony Mars'
building schedule and she studied how they'd optimized the
construction robot squad.
    Kamp Kans was sited on the Tharsis Plain, near the
equator, because the surface there was covered with a thick layer
of fine-grained regolith - sand that proved easy to scoop up and
fabricate into stone building blocks. They were recovering water at
a decent pace, harvesting a pint or two from each cubic meter of
regolith. But warming the heavy-walled bays took longer than
expected. They were still very cold, and the ponds were still
filled with ice.
    "Look here, Liz. The greenhouse bay is colder than a
Canadian winter."
    "Yeah, I saw that. I'll have to keep all the live
cargo in a habitat module until the bay