Charles and I met frequently, sometimes alone, more often with Stephen Leander and others present. Our discussions revolved around practical aspects of moving large objects with the tweakers.
He spent hours each day immersed in the QL thinker, preparing, exercising for another trip. The effort took its toll. After long sessions connected to the QL, Charles needed several minutes to begin speaking coherently. I feared for him.
Six attended the first conference on Preamble, two weeks after Ilya’s death: myself, Charles and Leander, areologist Faoud Abdi of Mariner Valley, architect and engineer Gerard Wachsler from Steinburg-Leschke in Arcadia, and a newly initiated Martian thinker, who had just the day before chosen her name: Aelita. Aelita would act as Preamble’s main thinker, coordinating all the station’s and project’s activities.
The experts convened in the laboratory annex, still unfinished. As we seated ourselves, nano paint crept along the walls, hissing quietly and forming geometric decorations. The ever-present smell of yeast was particularly pungent here. We seemed to live always in a vast bakery.
Faoud Abdi — tall, sharp-featured, with large, languid eyes — was the first to speak. He wore a neat white jallabah, slate and books making prominent lumps in the robe’s large pockets.
“I have been told to consider an impossibility,” Abdi began, standing before us with his back to a small data display. “I have been told to research the effects on Mars of a brief period without Solar System gravitational pull. I am told this is purely theoretical — and so I must assume that we are all going to do something drastic with Mars, perhaps what happened to Phobos. Unless Phobos is theoretical as well.” He regarded us dubiously, received no reaction to his humor — if humor was intended — and sighed. “I must tell you why Mars is stable now, and discuss popular theories of Mars’s areological decline. Is this what you wish?”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“I once worked with your husband, Madam Vice President. He was a fine man and we shall all miss him.”
“Thank you.”
“He was concerned, as am I, about the death of Mars hundreds of millions of years ago. But in fact death is a misnomer, for Mars is not completely cool inside. There is still areological activity. However, the plumes rising within the mantle have stabilized and no longer produce lateral pressure on the crust of Mars.
“In the past, there were never more than twelve crustal plates, and now those plates have frozen into one. No lateral pressure — no migration of the old plates — no fracture and subduction of plate boundaries — reduces volcanism. The last volcanoes active on Mars were the shield volcanoes familiar to us all, the Tharsis trio by main example, and Olympus itself. Without plate movement, mountains stopped building, and without volcanism, outgassing ceased, and Mars’s thin atmosphere simply evaporated into space, not to be replaced. Mars’s biosphere died within a few hundred million years of the end of tectonics. Now, stability…”
“Balanced flow,” Leander said.
“Precisely. Aelita, please bring up Dr. Wegda’s deep soundings of the Martian crust and mantle.”
Aelita complied. Behind Abdi appeared a diagram familiar to all — a cross-section of Mars, rotating to provide a three-dimensional view of the interior. “You see, there are sixteen cyclic plumes rising and sinking, but they have assumed a dimpled inverted form, rising on the outside and sinking on the inside. The net force conveyed to the crust over these plumes is zero, though local areological effects are evident. The stability is really too delicate… That is, Mars should shift at any time. But this has not happened in three hundred million years. There is much we do not understand.
“A shove applied to the entire planet, however slight — as might be given by removing solar tidal forces, for example — could upset the plumes and re-start tectonic activity.” He stopped for a moment, hands hovering beside the frozen diagram of Mars. “Without a large moon to keep Mars in balance, relatively slight changes may also tilt the axis.”
“If we leave, it must be to venture closer to the sun, no?” Abdi asked.
“We haven’t decided,” I said.
“If that is so, there would be much greater effects than I have calculated. And my results already point to resumption of tectonics.”
“What would that mean? For all of us living here?” Wachsler asked.
“More marsquakes. Substantial activity along the old plate boundaries, perhaps. Volcanoes. There is no way to predict the long-term effects.”
“Short-term?” Wachsler asked.
“Several major marsquakes, but it would take decades before volcanism became widespread along new arcs of fire.”
“Would it be reversible?” Wachsler.asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Once we jiggled it, could we expect Mars to become stable again?”
“Not for perhaps tens of millions of years,” Abdi said. “Stability is stability. Instability is not.”
“Aelita?” Leander asked, patting his new offspring on its arbeiter carriage.
Aelita’s voice was smooth and huskily feminine. Its image, a long-faced, classically featured female with black hair cut in a short shag, reminded me of a Disney wicked queen. “Dr. Abdi’s conclusions seem reasonable. My libraries do not provide complete information about Mars’s interior.”
“You have all that’s available,” Leander said.
“Then I suggest we learn more,” Aelita said.
Abdi glanced around the table. He smiled.
“We will,” I said. “Dr. Abdi, we’ll need more information about Mars’s interior within twenty days.”
“Yes, Madam Vice President,” Abdi said happily. “Am I to understand — I will do a survey, on the quick, larger than that of Dr. Wegda himself?”
“Please,” I said. “It’s very important. You understand security requirements?”
“I do,” said Dr. Abdi solemnly.
“Doctor Wachsler, every station should make a structural report. How well can they withstand quakes? Do any stations lie directly over old plate boundaries?”
“A few.” Wachsler frowned and shook his head. “We’ve never designed stations to withstand heavy areologic activity.”
“Can they be strengthened?” I asked.
“Some stations sit on old alluvial soils. If there’s a major marsquake, every seam will be torn out, tunnels breached… You name it.”
“Those we’ll have to evacuate, won’t we?” I said. “We’ll meet with the folks in charge of civil preparations and discuss, that tomorrow. Dr. Wachsler, Dr. Abdi, I authorize you to draw funds from government accounting, tagged Black, Preamble. Aelita will monitor your experiments, and you will report every week to this committee.”
Wachsler stared at us as if we were all out of our minds. “I understand we’re dealing with some spectacular technologies here, but have you thought about the human impact?”
His note of condescension rankled me. “That’s almost all I’ve thought about, Doctor.”
“What could Earth possibly do to us that would be worse than what you’re contemplating? We’ve all seen the destruction at Melas Dorsa — but that’s nothing compared to hundreds of stations facing quakes.”
Charles raised his hand like a student in class. “May I answer?”
“Certainly,” I said.
“The locusts are just the beginning. In a few more months, they can turn Mars into a burnt cinder. If that isn’t enough, they can drop us into the sun, or shoot us out into space.”
Wachsler’s face went pale, but his dander was up. He obviously could not comprehend what Charles was saying, and was going to treat it as high exaggeration. He crinkled his eyes dubiously. “You truly believe this?”