CHAPTER 6 – IN MARS ORBIT
08:49 (GMT)
Tuesday, January 5, 2044
Command center, H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP
Arriving in low Mars orbit
‘’Third main engines burn completed! We are now in low Mars orbit, with a present altitude of 310 kilometers and an orbit inclination of 26 degrees.’’
The announcement from Shen Li Yang, the spaceship’s copilot and navigator, attracted a concert of cheers around the command center and the rest of the ship. Janet Larsson took the time to exchange handshakes with her command crew before issuing a series of orders.
‘’Viktor, switch our nuclear engines to power production mode.’’
‘’Already done, Commander.’’
‘’Excellent! Anton, we will start regulating our orbit as soon as we establish precisely the altitude of our apogee and perigee. Paul, send a message back to Vandenberg, stating that we arrived safely in low Mars orbit and that we will send them our exact orbit parameters once we will know them. Ken, how strong are the radiations outside at this altitude?’’
‘’Not healthy at all, Commander: I am currently reading a steady shower of 0.16 milligrays per hour of charged particles radiation. However, our shielding is more than adequate to easily absorb that amount of radiation.’’
‘’You reassure me, Ken.’’ said Janet before switching to ship-wide announcement. ‘’Attention all personnel, this is your commander speaking! We are going in the next few hours to regulate our orbit. Once that is done, we will start mapping and studying in detail the planet in order to confirm our choice of landing point for our lander craft. The satellite maintenance crews will now start doing an ultimate check of our various satellites prior to launching them once our orbit will have been circularized. That is all! Thank you for your attention.’’
Typing a command on the computer screen attached to the right arm of her seat, Janet then reviewed the list of satellites stored aboard her ship, along with their intended order of launch and their planned orbital parameters. The H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP carried in a number of hangars inside the outer edge of the disk section a total of thirteen satellites and two drone explorer craft meant to help map and study in unprecedented detail Mars and its surrounding space. Some of those satellites would also serve as communications relay satellites, in order to keep a permanent link between the ship and a surface crew, while other satellites were going to be used as global positioning satellites, to provide at all times an accurate position to surface team members and rovers. Larger hangars in the bow of the ship and around the disk section housed the main Mars manned lander, four Mars lander cargo ships, a planetary shuttle, a mini-orbital shuttle, a space tug and four flying maintenance boats. All these were lessons from the tragedy of the Mars One Mission, which had failed mostly due to undue haste and lack of support to its lander team. This time, the first Humans to land on Mars would do so only once various satellites and the sensors and telescopes aboard the FRIENDSHIP would have studied in detail the red planet, helping to select an optimum landing point. Once that point would be chosen, the two drone explorer craft would go down and let out remotely-piloted mini-rovers, to explore from up close and on the ground the chosen landing area. With luck, those mini-rovers were going to help find the perfect location for a fixed Mars base, one which would offer good protection against the radiations that constantly showered the surface of Mars and, if really lucky, would be near a significant source of water. For these two reasons, any cliff-side cave or old lava tunnel would constitute prime targets for the mini-rovers. Only once such a location would have been found would the manned lander go down with its crew of sixteen people. As for the four lander cargo ships, they would be sent down afterwards to the site of the fixed surface base, to provide it with extra supplies, construction materiel and heavy machinery. If more equipment or stores were still needed after that, the planetary shuttle would be able to bring those to the surface, while bringing up to orbit any ground samples deemed of interest. Janet was extremely proud to command such a ship as the FRIENDSHIP, which was in effect the first true interplanetary spaceship, able to fly return missions to the most remote planets of the Solar System. In fact, the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP was probably going to fly one day to Jupiter and Saturn, to study the prospects for establishing human colonies on selected moons.
Five hours later, with the ship’s orbit regulated to a very low eccentricity ellipse, Janet gave the order to launch the first satellites. The first to come out of its hangar was the Mars Polar Eye One, or MPEO, a large satellite with a battery of multi-spectral sensors, including cameras and radar antennas. Once freed from the ship, the MPEO took some distance before its chemical rocket engine was fired up, pushing it into a low polar orbit around Mars. As the MPEO proceeded to establish itself in a stable polar orbit, a constellation of four geostationary communications satellites deployed out of the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP and flew to positions high over the Mars equator, where they were going to be able to retransmit any signal between the surface, the ship and Earth, thus ensuring permanent communications links. The sixth satellite to be launched was maybe the most important one, as the MEHRI (Mars Equatorial High Resolution Imager) went to take a very low equatorial orbit with an inclination of thirty degrees around Mars. Its altitude of merely 150 kilometers, its large aperture cameras and its powerful, high resolution mapping radar were going to combine to provide the most detailed and accurate maps to date of the surface of Mars, maps that would prove crucial in helping to choose a final landing point for the manned lander.
On the ship itself, a team of astronomers, planetologists and geo-physicists, assisted by sensors specialists and geomaticians7, became quite busy, using the powerful telescopes, cameras, spectrometers and radars of the FRIENDSHIP to start to study in exquisite detail the surface of the planet. Within another day, those scientists and geomaticians became even more busy, as they started receiving and analyzing massive amounts of data from the satellites now orbiting Mars. As for the rest of the crew, it fell into an orbital maintenance and support activities routine, a routine much less glamorous than that of the scientists but one which was as important for the good functioning of the mission.
19:45 (GMT)
Saturday, January 9, 2044
Bar-lounge of the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP
In low Mars orbit
Xiulan looked with concern at Julie Deloncle as the 48 year old French geomatician sat down wearily on one of the high stools of the bar counter.
‘’My poor Julie! You look exhausted!’’
‘’I am! The amount of planetary data that we are receiving constantly from our various sensors and satellites is staggering. Even with working twelve hour shifts, my mapping specialists and our astronomers and planetologists can barely cope with that mass of data. The one good news out of that is that we are in the process of producing by far the best and most detailed maps of the surface of Mars ever compiled and assembled. I however decided that me and my team had to slow down a bit, in order not to burn ourselves out early in the mission, so I came here for a nice, refreshing drink.’’
‘’A good decision, Julie. How about a nice, cold cup of Vino Verde wine?’’
‘’I see that you know about my favorite refreshment already, Xiulan. I will gladly have a cup, please.’’
‘’One cup of Vino Verde coming up!’’ said cheerfully Xiulan before fetching a short, fat bottle from a refrigerator under the bar. She then opened the already half-empty bottle and filled a cup before putting it on top of the counter in face of Julie Deloncle, who grabbed it thankfully. Xiulan next presented to Julie her portable fingerprint teller terminal, so that the French woman could put her thumb on it and debit her ship’s account to pay for her drink. While alcoholic beverages were served on demand on the ship, they were not free and there were limits to the amount one could consume before being told to cut it. In case of doubt, Xiulan had the authority to ask a potential customer to blow in the alcohol meter of the bar, to see if that person had reached the maximum allowed limit of 0.04. If so, Xiulan would then have no choice but refuse to serve that person. Thankfully, she had not had to do this yet during the past nearly three months since her arrival on the ship.
Xiulan was bending down to put the bottle of Vino Verde back in its refrigerator when a wave of nausea hit her and she nearly let the bottle drop from her hand. Another bar customer, a hydroponics technician, saw her stumble behind the counter and got half up from his chair, concern on his face.
‘’Are you okay, Xiulan?’’
‘’I…I think so.’’ said weakly the barmaid. However, simply saying those words only intensified her nausea and she had to hurry to the waste basket set behind the bar counter, arriving just in time to throw up in it. Julie Deloncle, seeing that, jumped off her high stool and went around the counter to go help Xiulan, imitated by the hydroponics technician. Xiulan tried to wave them off, pretending that she would be okay.
‘’No…no need: it was just a passing thing.’’
‘’The hell it was, Xiulan!’’ replied Julie. ‘’You are pale and sweaty. I’m bringing you to the infirmary. Mister Alvarez, find me a bag or something that she can use if she needs to throw up again.’’
‘’Right away, Miss Deloncle.’’
The technician soon found an unused plastic bag and handed it to Julie, who in turn gave it to Xiulan before helping her get up.
‘’Here, keep it under your mouth, in case you feel like vomiting again. I will support you on the way.’’
‘’Thanks, Julie.’’ replied in a weak voice Xiulan, who didn’t feel well at all now. She let the geomatician guide her around the bar, then walked with her down the promenade strip towards the ship’s medical center. When they entered the reception room of the medical center, the nurse on duty rose at once from her chair and came to help Xiulan sit down.
‘’What happened, Misses Sommers?’’
‘’I…I was working behind the bar and was bending down when I suddenly felt nausea and vertigo. I threw up a couple of times.’’
The nurse touched Xiulan’s forehead with the back of her hand, then took her pulse and her blood pressure while asking her a few questions.
‘’Have you had those symptoms recently before?’’
‘’No! This is the first time I felt like this.’’
‘’When did you eat last time and what did you eat?’’
‘’I ate a fresh salad and a chicken and noodle soup two hours ago.’’
‘’Hum, nothing that would be hard to digest. Let me guide you to the examination room, then I will get Doctor Gorushkova.’’
‘’Thank you, Nurse Yamashita.’’ said weakly Xiulan before getting up and walking to the adjacent examination room, where Meiko Yamashita made her lie down on her back atop a medical examination bed. As the nurse went to get the ship’s assistant medical officer, Julie smiled to Xiulan while holding gently one of her hands.
‘’You are now in good hands, Xiulan. Everything will be fine.’’
Xiulan didn’t reply to that, too busy thinking about the possible causes of her nausea. Doctor Nadia Gorushkova entered the examination room less than a minute later and gave a critical look at Xiulan before smiling to her.
‘’So, what is the problem here?’’
‘’I was suddenly overcome with nausea as I was working behind the bar, Doctor.’’ answered Xiulan, who then recounted in detail what had happened. Gorushkova listened to her, then took a couple of minutes to examine her, watched on by Julie and the nurse. At the end of it, the Russian doctor helped Xiulan to sit up on the examination bed, swinging her legs over the edge before smiling to the barmaid.
‘’I see a couple of possibilities here. First, when were your last menstruations?’’
Xiulan was struck by that question as she realized something.
‘’Uh, seven weeks ago, Doctor. I am normally very regular but I put my missing menstruation on account of my trip in space.’’
‘’Well, I can tell you from past experience and knowledge that being in zero gravity may affect female menstruations. However, most of this ship has been under artificial gravity from the start of this mission. I believe that you are married and that your husband is aboard, correct?’’
‘’Yes, that’s correct, Doctor.’’
‘’Then, let me get something quickly. I will be back in a minute.’’
Gorushkova returned in the examination room after less than a minute and handed a small, elongated object wrapped in plastic to Xiulan.
‘’I will need you to go to the washroom adjacent to the reception room and follow the instructions on the package, Misses Sommers.’’
Xiulan had one look at the inscriptions on the packaging and felt emotions wash over her.
‘’A pregnancy test?’’
‘’That’s right! I suppose that you have been active sexually during the last few weeks?’’
‘’Uh, quite active, actually, Doctor.’’
‘’Then, go to the washroom and we will see if your husband hit the jackpot. Nurse Yamashita will help you if need be.’’
With the nurse then escorting out an excited Xiulan to the washroom, Julie Deloncle grinned to Gorushkova.
‘’Xiulan could be the first woman to become pregnant in space?’’
‘’She very well could be, in view of the symptoms I saw. We will know better in a few minutes.’’
Both women had to wait only three minutes before a muffled shout of joy was heard from the center’s visitors washroom, making Nadia Gorushkova smile to Julie.
‘’It looks like I was right. Mister Sommers will be able to claim himself as being the father of the first baby conceived in space.’’
‘’But, our mission still has over 23 months at a minimum to go before we will be back in Earth orbit.’’ nearly stuttered Julie. ‘’That means…’’
‘’That Xiulan’s child will be born in space, on this spaceship? Yes, it does! Furthermore, that baby will have time to celebrate its first birthday while still on this ship.’’
‘’Oh my god! This is one hell of a news.’’
‘’Yes it is!’’ said Gorushkova, becoming quite serious. ‘’Something tells me that Xiulan won’t be the only woman to become pregnant on this trip. It is a good thing indeed that they loaded some baby supplies and equipment aboard before we departed Earth, just in case.’’
As she had predicted, another female crewmember was found to be pregnant three weeks later, with a third woman getting a positive test another week after that. The ship’s chief medical officer, Doctor Alexander Cranston, soon had to put the brakes on the avalanche of questions that came from medical experts on Earth, essentially refusing to turn the three pregnant women on the ship into some kind of medical guinea pigs. In that, he was firmly supported by Janet Larsson, who basically blacklisted the messages coming from the most obnoxious specialists on Earth. Those specialists were going to have to content themselves with the routine medical reports concerning each crewmember, which were regularly transmitted to Earth and were also filed in the ship’s medical archives.