As the soil racks filled, Gwen and Townsend augmented the greenhouse's power supply. While rated at 100 kW, the base reactor was only required to put out that much power when synthesizing propellant to fill the ERV. That phase of its life had ended before the crew had ever launched from Earth. Since then, the reactor had only to meet the Beagle's life-support-system requirements, which rarely exceeded ten kilowatts, never more than twenty. This meant eighty kilowatts of spare power was available, round-the-clock. Cables were run out from the reactor, allowing up to 50 kW of extra power to light and heat the greenhouse, as necessary. Another 30 kW was made available for the microwave oven to bake water out of the Martian soil. The power allotments were more than ample. Thank God for that nuke, Gwen thought.
Moving the landing beacons from the ERV to the greenhouse took less than a day, but the construction of the microwave oven was considerably more complex. Nevertheless, Gwen was up to the job, and the spare S-band Traveling Wave Tube Antenna, or "tweeta," was pulled out of the Beagle's communication bus and reinstalled on a simple platform within an aluminum pipe that Gwen pulled from the ship's now-useless landing stage.
The S-band unit worked at a frequency of 2.5 GHz, very close to the 2.45 GHz commonly used in kitchen microwave ovens on Earth, whose resonance allows for very efficient heating of water. At this frequency, its emitted radiation had a wavelength of 12 cm, or five inches, which allowed the five-inch-diameter landing-stage pipe to function as an excellent wave-guide. Since the fittings were already in place to attach this tube to an aluminum landing-stage propellant tank, setting that up as the oven was straightforward, with the tank's pressure vent ports providing a means to extract the water vapor produced from heating the soil. The hardest part was cutting a porthole in the tank to allow soil to be shoveled in, then fabricating a leakproof flange to close the hole while heating was underway. Gwen was able to do this with only the help of hand tools plus the miniature lathe, mill, drill press, and buzz saw on the Beagle's lower deck—a testament to skill that few but an expert machinist could appreciate.
As the oven was completed, the search for water—or damp soil—began. Luke suggested the dry lake bed, so he and McGee went there first. The dirt at the surface proved to be as dry as any on Mars, but a foot beneath the surface they found spots where the soil water content approached three percent. The two men dug out a trailer load and returned to the base. Finally, about a hundred pounds of this (really not very wet) material was shoveled into the oven.
Gwen sealed the port and threw the switch. A humming sound throbbed through the suits of the anxiously watching crew, as stray S-band emissions interfered with their radios.
Other than the hum, nothing seemed to happen. Gwen put her glove on the exit pipe from the oven vent. Patiently she waited, feeling nothing. Then she felt it: first vibration, then heat. Steam in the pipe! She ran to the other end of the apparatus where the transparent condenser was rapidly clouding over; water droplets began to form.
Less than an hour later, Gwen held aloft a transparent plastic gallon container, more than half filled with water. As the crew cheered, Gwen lifted her eyes in a silent prayer of thanks to He who dwelt beyond the purple Martian skies. Thank you Lord, for this bounty. May we prove worthy of it.
Rebecca ran off to test a water sample; it would be useless if it was excessively saline or contained toxic elements. It tested pure.
Not bad, she thought wryly. On any planet, if you want a good still, find yourself a hillbilly. She poured the contents of the plastic jug into a rack of seedlings in the greenhouse.
The next day she did the same, and over the following two months as the crew dug more soil and produced more water, the seedlings grew, until every rack was filled with leafy greens.
But as the plants grew more lush, on low rations the crew grew thinner and hungrier.
HOUSTON
MARCH 15, 2012 15:20 CST
Craig Holloway left the courtroom to the catcalls of disappointed multitudes. It was horrible to be the object of popular rage and scorn, but at least the pretrial hearing had turned out well. Put simply, the government didn't have enough evidence to hold him.
The citizens of Houston were rude, though—very rude. Holloway winced as he passed several holding a noose. "You'll hang, Holloway!" But despite their verbal ferocity, no one in the crowd made any attempt at physical assault. Against his expectations, Holloway made it to his electrocycle in one piece.
Negotiating the usual set of detours caused by downtown Houston's endless road construction, Holloway rode on to Interstate 45 and headed south toward his home in Clear Lake. Quiet and clean, the electrocycle was dwarfed in size, sound, and odor by the surrounding traffic, but its iron-ion battery could move it at sixty for ten hours. A devout ecogoth, Holloway would drive nothing else. It was his contribution to saving the Earth.
The situation was laughable. Half the people at Mission Control believed he had dumped the ERV propellant, but they couldn't prove a thing because they had no idea how he'd done it. When it came to computational literacy, NASA was a joke.
Holloway recalled the story of how in 1997, the space agency had finally upgraded the space-shuttle computers to IBM 386's, thereby making the organization only eight years behind the average technology available at Radio Shack. They were even further behind today.
The idiots had examined his transmission for fuel-dumping instructions. Of course they had found none. As if he'd be dumb enough to do it by attaching an executable code to E-mail.
In his younger days, Holloway had been a serious recreational hacker and he still liked to keep his hand in. Self-erasing nano-encryption was an elementary technique for transmitting hidden programs. Apparently the self-described "techno-wizards" at Mission Control had not even heard of it. What a bunch of bozos!
And those nitwits presumed to gamble with the fate of the Earth. Not one of them cared a whit about the fact that the success of their precious mission could cause a global pandemic. Not one of them bothered to think for a minute about the ecological devastation that would ensue if the biotech industry ever got its hands on Martian DNA and started playing some of the Frankenplant crop-engineering games that Rebecca Sherman was already talking about.
Rebecca Sherman—now there was a piece of work. She pretended to be so enlightened, and so concerned about the welfare of the planet. Years ago, during the Desert War, they had both briefly been members of the Houston Peace Coalition. Yet her ideas of people adopting the role of agents of environmental improvement by spreading life were clearly nothing other than unreconstructed humanism. He had once offered to show her the errors of her ways by asking her out on a private date, where their differences could be worked out in a comfortable and intimate setting. But she had just laughed at him.
So much for NASA's enlightened intellectual.
Mason, Rollins, and the rest could eat crow. And as for the delightful crew of Bombs-Away Townsend, Saint Guenevere, "Hoss Cartwright" Johnson, Manifest Destiny McGee, and Rebecca the Ice Princess, they could sign their advertising endorsement contracts from Mars.
The Earth would do just fine without them.
CHAPTER 14
OPHIR PLANUM
APRIL 22, 2012 19:30 MLT
DINNERTIME ON MARS. A tired-looking crew sat down to eat, and as they stared at their meager rations, Rebecca entered the galley carrying a small tray of fresh greens with a few small radishes. "Here it is, folks. Our first harvest. Get ready for Thanksgiving dinner."