======
The Lander started
to glow, a tiny speck in the sky. She might have been visible from Mars Base
One. Nobody was watching though,
everybody down there was busy playing ground control.
The noise level was
growing bad, sonic boom included.
“Chutes… Numbers
within Viking reference, temperature normal pressure 3 mbar. Vision: Bad”.
“Changing filters! I want visual when we loose the chutes, the last 200 L we need to stay clear of boulders! (If there are any)”
“Roger, this better?
There go the parachutes! Retro, and hover! Debby she’s all yours, do find us a
free parking space!”
The computers had done
all the flying, well falling, up till, (down till?) now. And they would do that
until they hit rock bottom, dirt, or maybe just plane dirt. That would probably
be all right, but just to be sure, they could take over now, if need be.
“5 mbar, we’re
drifting, hidari no desu! 150 L. Clear, going down, (2km/h, 0.5. 0.25). We’re
down. We’re in a cloud!” (To the left!)
“Changing filters,
I want to look around! Wolfs, check list”
“Roger, all
stations general check”
No sound, well, the sound of cooling metal, and something like a distant thunder, or rumble coming from outside, sound from outside the ship, amazing. It would take the ship an hour to cool down, fumes had to drift away, everything had to be checked, there was still a lot of dust coming down, well you know the drills.
“Where are we, lets
see, we’re within 200 of our spot, small rocks, gravel, legs are clear. Turning
cameras. I can smoky mountains, about 4 km away from here. The dust is settling
down. Expect windows clearance in 5 minutes”
“Changing”
A pebble started to slide down. Some dust had moved by the noise of the Lander coming through the sound barrier.
The dust
had been supporting sand grains lying around on the North Slope of the huge
Crater for about 300 Martian years. Columbus
hadn’t even been born… Well who cares he wasn’t a Martian we think. The sand
grains bumped into more sand grains, stirring up more of the red gray dust
again. You wouldn’t have seen nothing no more…
“Changing filters,
lets try with Natural. Seems like we started an Avalanche over there. Well
we’re well clear, miles and miles. We got a phone-call people! (“Hi you too”), I’ll put them on the
system.”
“You’re on the
system. Over”
“Dawn here, ground
control, seems you got down just fine. How’s the patient?”
“Debby here, not
good. Say again: not good. This is going to be narrow. We’ll get the balloon up
as soon as we can”
“Roger. We got you
on seismograph too. Twice, what happened? About 3 clicks away from you”
“Avalanche of some
sorts, seems to settle down now. Tap into the camera signal. There you are.
Well Dust!”
“No reason to swear…
Well Mars Base out I guess. You got work to do, we’ll stay near the phone be
sure.”
“Ship out”
“Yeah, sorry Bo.”
They all were
silent, the ship had to cool down, they had to pack and to unpack things. Debby
was taking care of her sister. Body had to be frozen, regulations…
It was
raining tiny rust particles. The temperature: minus 40, Centigrade, one fine
morning on Mars.
