CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHAT MARS WAS WORTH
Earth and Camp One, October to December 1980
The argument over Mars moved from engineering offices to cabinet rooms.
Washington received the first mining projections in October 1980.
Moscow received them hours later.
Tokyo, Beijing, Bonn*20, Paris, London and the other partner governments received versions adjusted for the preferences of whoever had written the cover memorandum.
The numbers disagreed.
The conclusion did not.
Mars could grow.
Not cheaply.
Not quickly.
But it could grow.
The first generation of planners had justified Mars in scientific and strategic terms. Knowledge. Prestige. Technology. National influence restrained by multinational cooperation.
The colony added another argument.
Industry.
Iron was useful not because anyone intended to ship raw Martian ore to Earth at ruinous cost, but because local iron reduced the mass Earth had to send to Mars. Silicon could support glass, ceramics and eventually electronics. Aluminum-bearing material offered structural possibilities if refining could be made efficient. Water ice was already life support, fuel feedstock and industrial resource.
Every kilogram Mars produced for itself freed a kilogram of transport capacity for something more sophisticated.
That changed the economics.
A committee in Geneva spent eleven days arguing about whether the settlement should be described as a base, colony, territory or international installation.
On Mars, Shaw read the summary and handed it to Valdés.
“What are we?” he asked.
“Apparently undecided.”
He looked around the crowded common room.
“Feels fairly decided.”
The political question became urgent because civilians were coming.
The military arrangements that had sustained Camp One could not simply be extended to civilians. The charter negotiations were becoming as important to the colony's future as its next cargo shipment.
At a televised signing ceremony, leaders spoke of humanity.
Behind closed doors they spoke of budgets, access, industrial rights, launch slots and who would control the orbital transfer stations.
Both conversations mattered.
The Mars effort survived because idealism and self-interest finally pointed in the same direction.
By the end of 1980, the colony had pressure habitats, a functioning spaceport, an Arrivals hall, agricultural production, workshops, manufacturing, experimental mineral processing and prospecting teams ranging farther from Camp One.
The central settlement remained small enough that a man could walk its pressurized spine in minutes. One branch ended at the Soviet-administered dome shared with the participating Warsaw Pact contingents. A pressure door marked the entrance. The duty officer inside recorded who came through it. Visitors identified themselves and waited for permission; residents returned there after their international shifts. Political briefings belonged to the dome's own evening schedule. A Polish specialist could spend the day beside a Chinese machinist in the Mechanical Dome and still be required to sleep behind that door. The shared life-support lines ran beneath it. The social division ran through the people.
Beyond it, isolated installations stood across the plain: agriculture farther out, mining routes beyond the ridges, communications equipment on higher ground, technical structures near the main power and transport systems.
It was not a city.
But it had begun to develop districts.
That frightened planners more than any machine failure.
Machines followed diagrams.
Cities did not.
The first civilian mission was approved.
Thirteen passengers.
Thirteen seats were allocated for the provisional passenger group.
Each allocated couch had a named passenger. The working manifest expected thirteen people to use thirteen seats.
The civilian transport was different from the scheduled chain that had sustained Mars since 1979.
Normally a traveler left Earth on a surface-to-orbit shuttle, transferred at the Earth orbital station, boarded a long-haul interplanetary ship, crossed to Mars orbit, transferred again at the Mars station and finally descended by shuttle to the surface.
Cargo changed hands even more often.
The first civilian transport would not.
It carried people, equipment and a large dedicated supply load intended to expand the colony immediately on arrival. The ship would depart from Earth directly after orbital insertion and assembly support, then continue to Mars with its cargo attached rather than relying on the normal scheduled freight chain.
It was expensive.
Politicians approved it because the first civilians had become more than passengers.
They were proof.
Proof that Mars was no longer only a military engineering project.
Proof that people could choose it.
A notification rattled across the board above the operations desk.
ORBITAL SHUTTLE 06 — INBOUND
CARGO: WATER-PUMP SPARES AND REPLACEMENT PARTS
ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: SIX HOURS LATE
Valdez looked up at it.
“Six hours. That's almost on time.”
Shaw checked the arrival notice. “At least it's only spare parts.”
“Good thing the thirteen are coming on a different schedule,” Valdez said. “Those arrivals are always exactly on time.”
Shaw laughed. “Every single one.”
The board clattered again. Neither of them looked up.
Outside the terminal windows, a descent shuttle crossed the sky as a bright moving point.
Far beyond it, invisible in daylight, Earth was preparing the thirteen-person civilian group for the longest direct voyage yet attempted.