A Colony on Mars (8 page)

In addition to working on your crew we have a work order board in the Government cavern, it is posted in front of the supply room. You should check the board every morning or evening when you are off duty. If there is a work request posted that you believe that you have the necessary skil s for you should remove the thumb tack and remove the request. Notify your crew chief before starting work for the day that you have the work request then handle that first before catching up with your crew. In that way all requests for repairs or improvements needed by the members of the community will be handled promptly. If there are stil any requests on the board when I come over to hold muster I wil bring them in with me and assign the job to a volunteer. With that the crews al had a little meeting to pick their crew chief. Crew six actually held an election and elected the guy who had been on Mars before they arrived yesterday. Each of the crew chief's came up to Carter and gave him the name of the person selected. Then they all went right to work, assembling the tools and supplies they would need.

The people on Crew eleven assembled and all eyes turned to Tim. One of the men said “You are the one with the engineering degree Tim, I can say that you helped me a lot during training, explaining the technical stuff behind what the instructor had told us. I nominate Tim Erkin to be our foreman, any seconds,” everybody seconded the motion so they didn't need an election, Tim was elected. Tim went over to where Carter was standing and told him “Crew eleven selected Tim Erkin.” Carter just circled the name on the list and said

“Thanks.”

Some crews were working topside making cement blocks, some were picking up blocks that were already cured and started building public rooms like the dining room, kitchen and public bath rooms. Some went to work laying in a water line, to the kitchen, while another crew installed the reverse osmosis system, where the water from the river entered the cavern above the falls. Some were running temporary wiring in from the diesel generator that was situated in the Government cavern. The remaining crews had equally important tasks. As the morning progressed some of the workers traded places with workers on the other crews based on previous experience, knowledge, skil s and abilities. I have a lot of experience in installing electrical wiring and would be of more benefit to the job if one of you guys has plumbing experience and wants to change jobs. Sure enough some person would say yeah I have some plumbing experience but I don't know squat about electricity, so they would switch jobs. Some of the crews had surplus men because the job was being done by just three or four people that seemed to know what they were doing so the surplus workers would find a crew that needed more help and go to work there.

Carter watched the progress in awe. The field kitchen was planned to be adjacent to the Government kitchen but the men themselves had elected to set it up in The Company cavern and had it all set up in a couple hours. One of the crews had located the new walk in refrigerator which was packaged on five separate pallets, got hold of a forklift and started assembling it with the door opening into the kitchen. After the lunch break they quickly had it all assembled, wired in and running. Thelma entered and watched along with Carter as the crews transformed the Company cavern before their eyes. Tim saw Carter take Thelma back and show her the hot spot. It was located at the back wal , near the right side of the Company cavern as you entered from the Government cavern. The Company cavern was 1.2 miles from front to back, it was a little over half a mile wide at its widest point but tapered to only about a quarter mile wide where the tunnel entered. It was about three eights of a mile wide at the back wall. Of course none of the walls ran in a straight line. The hot spot was just over a mile from the tunnel entrance. The floor space in The Company cavern was equal to about 930 football fields at floor level.

Thelma and Carter examined the hot spot then left the cavern, returning a few minutes with a couple of the Government scientific types. They pounded, prodded, dril ed out a few core samples from the wall and the floor. They left the cavern, only to return a short while later with some other scientists. They talked some more, made some notes. A short time later woman with a camera came in and took several pictures of the blank wal and the floor. Then they all left. About 1130 Carter returned and told Jack that he had done every one a big favor. It is fewer than one hundred feet down at that spot on the floor to where it is over one thousand degrees Fahrenheit. It would be the ideal spot to mount the geothermal generator. That spot could even be blocked off from the rest of the cavern. There is a good water supply in the creek here so it looks like we have found the spot for our generator, one of them anyhow. The workers broke for lunch 1200 but most of them were back working even before 1300. “I have never seen people this industrious but I guess this is what you get when you only take the cream of the crop.” Carter remarked to Thelma. “I'l have to admit that I had my doubts yesterday when I discovered that about half the construction workers were women but I am proud to say that they seem to be doing just fine.” The crews knocked off for the day at 16:30 to get cleaned up for dinner. A few of them still stuck around to finish what they were working on.

That evening The Company cavern was a lot better lit and four hundred new houses had one level of blocks laid. The crews had not made the wal s higher because they had run out of blocks. The block makers had more than one thousand new blocks curing on the surface, near the elevator. A few of the workers had already had a chance to try out their Mars suits on the surface. Tim walked by the supply area and was amazed to see the amount of material that had already been unloaded from Mars Supply Two. There was an acre or more of Supplies now available. Eventually the supplies brought in by the ship would cover more than five acres. Al of the pallets and crates had been carefully dismantled a and the lumber stacked just like any other supplies. Once all the wood had been stacked the new people would each receive their fair share for their personal use.

Tim went to the public bathroom and cleaned up. His crew had been laying cement blocks and required little advise or supervision from him. He had spent the day working as a gopher for the other crews because he knew better than most, how to find things at supply. By the end of the day he had a pretty good idea where to locate tools and materials that the various installers needed. Carter spotted Tim in the chow line, and came up to him. “Tim I see that you have had some wel drilling experience. How would you like to be on our drilling team starting tomorrow morning?” Walter and Thelma Potts were right behind Tim in line and they invited Carter to step in front. Nobody minded much when a friend joined someone in line because the line moved pretty fast anyway. “I would love to do some dril ing Carter, I have spent a lot more time dril ing than in construction and that is what my degree is in.” “Good then tomorrow morning you can pick your team, but you have to take Freddy as your first choice because he has had a little experience dril ing on Mars. Freddy is not a leader, he's a fol ower but a good worker and he knows a lot about Mars.” “How many men would you think that I need?” “I don't know I haven't had any wel drilling experience, in fact you seem to be the only construction guy that I could find with any.” “Lets start with about eight then. Ordinarily I would say that we need timbers but since wood is scarce we can settle for a ladder and a superstructure built from pipe, and a platform at the top made of lumber to hang the drill from. By the way, do we have wel drilling equipment?” “I don't know you might have to improvise something.” Tim had stumbled across some equipment earlier that day when he was looking for something else. That evening, after dinner he enlisted Archy and a couple people that he knew and they constructed a ladder the superstructure for the rig and a platform.

CHAPTER - Tim drills a well

September 30, 2107: That morning, Tim selected his crew and they went to work. They scavenged part of what they needed and jury rigged the rest. They did have some shaft and a dril head, they converted the u-joint and motor from an old fork lift to be mounted on the platform and turn the shaft. By the end of the day they had tested all the equipment and had dril ed a hole twelve inches in diameter and about three feet deep.

October 1, 2107: (from Tim's notes}”This morning we started dril ing in earnest but it is not going very well, the drill head keeps binding up and something we are trying to dril through keeps dulling our dril head so that it has to be resharpened every few feet. We have obtained a high pressure pump and a fire hose. We keep washing the clay from the dril bit with the nozzle of the hose before it can be resharpened. I had an idea, we removed the drill bit and ran the fire hose through the shaft and gave it full power. The soft clay began to liquefy and bubble to the top. I noticed smal rocks ranging is size from the size of walnuts to the size of apples being forced up to the surface. I figured we must be drilling through an ancient lava flow. I picked up the rocks that were being forced to the surface and threw them into a wheelbarrow. We were down almost 50 feet and the thermometer indicated that the temperature was up to two hundred fifty degrees. We needed around one thousand degrees to obtain sufficient conversion steam to turn a generator the size of the one we intended to mount and make electricity. That afternoon when the crew went off duty my curiosity was getting the best of me so I went over to the lake and rinsed off the rocks I had col ected. They looked kind of pretty so I put them in a canvas bag and took them to my quarters. I didn't know at the time what I would eventually use them for but on Mars you can find a use for everything. Maybe I could mount them in concrete and use them to decorate around our front door someday.”

The talk radio announcer who called himself Harry Martian broke in to the music stations to announce that dril ing had started for the hole that would enable the new geothermal generator. Tim had his ear piece radio on the talk station and was amused at the different spins that the listeners put on the project. A couple callers feared that what they were doing could cause a volcano to erupt in The Company cavern. Actually, thought Tim, that would be a possibility. Tim found himself thinking about that possibility the rest of the day. After work Tim looked up the scientist he had met named George Schultz, and asked him what he thought. George said, “you don't need to worry at all about your dril ing effort causing a volcano,” “How can you be so sure?” “I am not at all sure that it won't, Tim but if it does you won't have long to worry about it.”

Somehow Tim did not feel at all reassured.

October 2, 2107: ( from Tims notes) We reached a depth of 60 feet and were getting a temperature of over six hundred degrees. We continued on slowly until at just under one hundred feet we were getting the one thousand degrees that we needed. We withdrew the hose and sank a blade that I had found in the supply yard that enlarged the hole to a three foot circumference. We then started inserting a double 6” pipe joined at the bottom by a U shaped fitting.

When the U at the bottom connecting our two pipes reached five hundred degrees we began to pump the cold water from the lake into one of the pipes. Hot water began to spew from the other so we connected a hose to the end where the hot watter was bubbling out and fed that into the lake. We were taking our cold water from the headwater of the stream just below the fal s. By this time another crew had mounted the generator on cement blocks so we connected the out hose to the generator and ran the exhaust water hose from the generator into the lake. We then powered up the generator and it began to pump water into the lake. We then eased the dual pipes deeper into the hole. Shortly we had raw steam flowing into the generator and the fan began to turn. While we were busy with these tasks the electrical crew had wired the generator into the electrical system and the power began to flow. Once the pipes were at the bottom of the hole we aliened the pipe from the generator to line up with the output pipe and cut the motor forcing the cold water into the pipe. We didn't have long to make the connection before the U at the bottom of the pipe would melt. When the live steam diminished enough that we could handle it in a Mars suit one of the men connected the live steam pipe directly to the generator and we restarted the pump sending the cold river water into the ground. On most steam generation systems the water is cooled and recycled but in this case we needed to heat the water in the stream and the lake so we are constantly drawing cold water from the headwater just below the fal s and depositing it back into the stream about thirty feet down river. This should be adequate to heat the stream and lake to a temperature that can accommodate trout and even catfish. We were generating close to thirty megawatts of power and it was up to the electricians to route it throughout the facility and put it to use. I don't know how much thirty megawatts is but they tell me it will be all the electricity we wil need until for some time to come.

That evening everything in the caverns seemed to burn a little brighter. We left the old diesel generator hooked up as a backup system but we had quit running it.

CHAPTER – The Food on Mars

October 5, 2107: Besides the ever present mushrooms the colony also raised chickens, rabbits, turkeys, ducks and geese. There was a small heard of goats but there wasn't enough for them to graze on. They produced a little milk but Tim never knew what happened to that. There certainly wouldn't have been enough to go around. Once in a while they would butcher a kid but Tim never found out who got the meat, he suspected the kitchen staff as there would not be enough fresh meat to go around either. They were getting enough frozen meat from Earth to flavor their food but they seldom if ever had steak or roast beef or any plain meat dish even hamburger. There always seemed to be bacon sausage and once in a while, ham.

Tim looked up the two guys from the Scientific crew that were working with the small experimental garden and ask them what all it would take to grow enough vegetables to meet the needs of the community of now over six hundred people. After some discussion the finally decided that they would need about 160 acres of fertile irrigated land with adequate grow lights to raise everything they needed.