On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

Jalopy’s main computer. It could track any moving object on the surface of Mars larger than 2 centimetres in diameter or within a relatively close (750,000 kilometres, twice as far as Luna is from Terra) approach to Mars from space. It was going to be used for directing and focussing the Ultra-High-Definition camera. It had another use too, but I‘ll get to that later.
    The first two cameras were mounted on the port side, which would always be oriented towards Mars. The final two boxes contained duplicates of the ones I had just installed. These were installed on the starboard side, pointing away from Mars. When that configuration came up in the security briefing, half a dozen questions came to mind; but I decided not ask any of them. I really didn’t want to know. When the ESA agent finished his briefing he walked over to me, looked me right in the eye and said, “Is there anything, anything at all, that you need to ask me?” I looked him squarely back in the eyes and said, “No sir. Not a thing. I have my instructions.” He reached out and gently slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Good man.” Then he walked out of the room, and I never saw him again.
    The exterior “package” installation, in total, was fourteen hours. Of course, some of the fourteen hours was me, a-hem , doing a bit of cavorting about. Hey, it was the last time I’d ever walk in space; I was entitled to a bit of frolic. Had there been any audio or video feed of this going back to Flight Control, the “yee-haws” and “woo-hoos” would have done nothing to improve Hans’ state of mind. Thankfully, he was spared that challenge by the inherent secrecy of what I was doing. When I came back inside, I got out of the space suit/pressure suit combo and had a bite to eat; there was only 17 hours and 5 minutes left on the descent clock. There was only about four hours of real work left to do, so Flight Control told me to grab as much sleep as I could. It was getting harder to sleep, this close, after so much preparing and travelling. I was almost on Mars! This time, even though I was dog-tired, sleep came with a bit more difficulty. I finally managed to get a surprising seven hours of solid rack time (you have no idea how good you actually do sleep in deep space, until you’ve been there), and woke up with 7 hours and 45 minutes on the descent clock. I ate, used the emergency evacuation system for the last time, and moved the final three small bags of supplies into the Lander, securing them in place. Again, unbeknownst to me, this was a complete waste of time.
    At T-Minus 6 hours I began the final system conversions. This officially converted the Jalopy from transit vehicle to satellite. While I had been asleep, Flight Control was busy conducting tests on the camera packages, and everything checked out. They also got the Lander powered up and full diagnostics performed. They were able to do a portion of the systems conversion, but there were parts of it that had to be done locally.
    Finished with the software, I made the final hardware configuration changes. I ensured all the hatches, compartments, and storage bins were secured, even though empty. I was ready to leave the Jalopy behind. It had been my home for the last 246 days, and I was glad to be rid of it. It had been a comfortable ride, but in the last couple months the walls had been closing in.
    It was time put my Activity Suit on. It was quite different from my space suit. The Activity Suit was designed by MIT astronautics professionals for use on Mars’ surface. The Activity Suit did not need a pressure suit, as it maintained pressure mechanically (through fabric pressure) as Mars was not a total vacuum. It was much lighter and flexible than the pressure suit/space suit, and allowed freedom of movement. It was skin tight. There was still an inter-suit heating system, though it was only rated to -30 degrees Celsius. This was all that was technically required by the developers. Because