CHAPTER 4 – COMING ABOARD
16:51 (GMT)
Monday, October 19, 2043
Heavy cargo shuttle CALYPSO
Docking Station Number One, H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP
Low Earth orbit
‘’Your attention, please! Our shuttle is now safely docked to the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP. You may now leave your seats and proceed with your luggage towards the nose transfer airlock.’’
Xiulan Sommers pressed her gloved left hand around the gloved right hand fingers of her husband, Jack Sommers, as the overhead announcement triggered a wave of emotions in her. Jack, a tall and solidly built United States Air Force cook seconded to the Mars Home Project, smiled in return to his beautiful, delicate young wife.
‘’We are about to start living a great adventure together, Xiulan. I am so happy that they took you for this mission.’’
‘’And I am happy that we could stay together, Jack.’’
The shuffling forward of the other 36 passengers of their shuttle then made them get up from their heavily padded seats and grab their individual kit bags from the overhead bins. Since they were in zero gravity conditions, they had to move cautiously in their spacesuits, but the magnets integrated into the soles of their boots helped them stay attached to the floor of the aisle running by their seats. They were among the last to leave the shuttle by its nose transfer airlock and to enter the arrival compartment of Docking Station Number One, where two men and one woman wearing ship internal uniforms were waiting for them. The woman, who was in her early fifties, was the spitting image of what a Viking woman would have looked like, with pale blue eyes and platinum blond hair mixed with a few gray strands. She was also tall for a woman and looked very fit despite her age. She waited until all the 38 passengers from the shuttle were inside the arrival compartment to start speaking in a firm voice.
‘’Welcome to the H.S.S. FRIENDSHIP, ladies and gentlemen! I am Janet Larsson, commander of this spaceship. You are actually the last contingent of crewmembers we were expecting for this ship, so we will now be able to leave Earth orbit in a month, after you will have had time to accustom yourself to your new environment and jobs. Since you just completed a five hour transit from the surface, I will now hand you over to misters Pedro Alvarez and Xu Ling Wei, who will guide you to your cabins. Once there, you will be given some time to unpack and make yourselves at home before going to the crew lounge for 17:45 hour, ship time, where you will get a preliminary safety briefing prior to having supper. If you want to adjust your watches now, it will be exactly 17:03, ship time, in twelve seconds…five, four, three, two, one, top! I will see you all again in the crew lounge. Mister Alvarez, Mister Xu, they are now all yours!’’
A Latino man and an Oriental man standing behind Larsson stepped forward as the ship’s commander left the compartment, with the Latino man speaking up after looking around at the faces in the crowd in front of him.
‘’Good day and welcome, everybody! I am Pedro Alvarez and I am a hydroponics technician, like my friend Wei. If you will look at the cabin number given to each of you before departure, you will find that it starts with either the letter ‘A’ or the letter ‘F’. ‘A’ stands for ‘Aft’, meaning that cabins lettered as such are located in the aft carrousel ring of the ship. The cabins lettered with ‘F’ are located in the forward carrousel ring. I will be guiding those whose cabins are in the forward carrousel ring, while Wei will guide those whose cabins are in the aft carrousel ring. If those lodged in the forward carrousel ring may now follow me…’’
Jack and Xiulan ended up following Alvarez, as their cabin number was F-39. Imitating the Latino man, who was walking at a sedate pace in order to let his magnetic boot soles stick lightly to the floor and thus avoid simply floating down the tubular passageway, the young couple followed him down a tube leading to the core section of the ship. However, they turned off into another, separate tube after only twenty meters, then entered a compartment closed off by airtight doors. Alvarez stopped there for a moment, time to point to his followers the floor hatch near him, which was closed.
‘’First capital rule about safety on this spaceship: always close behind you any airtight hatch or door that you go through. This simple rule could save lives in case of an accidental decompression. Once down in the compartment below us, you will see two widely separated airtight doors: one marked ‘F’ for forward ring and one marked ‘A’ for aft ring.’’
Alvarez then opened the hatch, which looked quite solid, and slid down the ladder fixed under it. With the twenty persons of his group following him, he patiently waited for all of them to be down and pointed yet another airtight door marked with a red letter ‘F’.
‘’Beyond this door is an airlock meant to prevent both carrousel rings from decompressing because of a single door damaged or left opened. Once you will step out of that airlock, you will be standing on a fixed strip of floor one meter wide, which serves as a stepping platform from which you will then be able to set foot on the adjacent rotating floor of the Promenade Deck of the forward ring. The ring carrousels each turn in opposite direction at a rate of 3.7 rotations per minute, thus creating a felt gravity of close to one G via centrifugal effect. Please look both ways down the rotating floor before stepping off the fixed platform if you don’t want to collide with someone else.’’
Following scrupulously the instructions of the Latino man, the Sommers soon stood on the rotating floor of the forward ring, their feet firmly staying on the carpeted surface. Xiulan grinned to her husband as she experienced that moment.
‘’This is incredible! You could think that we are on Earth. And I don’t feel any disorientation.’’
‘’This ship is certainly way ahead of anything I have seen before in terms of facilities. But let’s follow Mister Alvarez: I am anxious to get to our cabin, so that I could take off this bulky spacesuit.’’
Less than five minutes later, the Sommers were dropped off by Alvarez in front of their assigned cabin. They had already seen pictures and mockups of the typical cabin on the spaceship while training in Vandenberg, so knew what to expect inside. They still were impressed when they entered a small lounge measuring three meters by four meters and furnished with a sofa, a work desk with chair and a video entertainment unit. Xiulan then entered the adjacent tiny bedroom, finding that a larger mattress and support frame had replaced the usual single bed. Space was thus even tighter, but she couldn’t care less: to be able to sleep beside her husband rather than in some double bunk bed arrangement was what was important for her. Going to one extremity of the bedroom, she opened the airtight door of the emergency decompression shelter cum spacesuit locker and saw that a second spacesuit resting stand had been added, taking the place of the closet normally found inside but which had been moved to the lounge. Helped by Jack, Xiulan gratefully got out of her spacesuit and fixed it to its stand, then connected it to a maintenance terminal that would recharge its battery and also refill its oxygen tank if needed. She then returned the favor to Jack, helping him out of his own suit. Once both in their internal ship uniforms, they hugged each other, with Xiulan resting her head on Jack’s chest.
‘’It is so good to be here with you, instead of having to wait two years for your return from space.’’
‘’Believe me, baby: those two years away from you would have felt like eternity to me.’’
They then exchanged a long kiss, which Jack interrupted with regret.
‘’Well, we better hurry to undo our bags now: that meeting in the crew lounge is due in less than fifteen minutes.’’
‘’Right!’’
After another six minutes, the couple left its cabin and made its way to the crew lounge, situated on the top floor of the same carrousel ring they were in already. They found that most of their companions who had traveled with them on the CALYPSO were already sitting around the small, round tables of the lounge. Taking place at an empty table, which sat under a lemon tree, Jack and Xiulan patiently waited the start of the announced briefing. Two minutes prior to the fixed time, Janet Larsson showed up with a laptop computer, plugging it to the large flat display screen fixed to one wall. Taking the time to make her first presentation slide appear on the screen, Larsson then eyed quickly the 38 persons facing her, smiling to them.
‘’Hello again! First, I would like to remind you that this is an international spaceship with an international crew under civilian control. Thus, no military style discipline is required or expected of you, even if you are an ex-service person. What is required and expected though are two things: team spirit and respect for others. If everyone aboard go by those two things, then we will have a great trip and a fantastic adventure that we will be proud to tell to our grandchildren. Now, while this ship would rightly appear to you to be quite extraordinary, it is by no means unbreakable, while space has plenty of dangers to offer, starting with cosmic radiations, meteorites and solar flares. That is why we have to work and live as a team through this mission. My sincere vow is that, by the end of this mission, we will feel more like a family than like a team. Let us now review the safety rules pertinent on this ship.’’
Larsson’s presentation ended up taking less than fifteen minutes, something that Jack appreciated, as he was starting to feel both hungry and tired. Once dismissed by Larsson, the newcomers left the lounge and walked to the crew cafeteria, situated on the same deck and same ring, some eighty meters away from the lounge. Xiulan nearly clapped her hands together in joy on seeing the classical American dinner restaurant looks of the cafeteria, with its partitioned booths lined up along huge wall display screens, which simulated windows giving a view of a Midwest country panorama.
‘’Oooh, I’m loving this place already! They really did their best to make us forget that we are aboard a spaceship.’’
‘’And they were quite successful, I must say. Let’s see what’s on the menu. If I don’t like it, I will go complain to one of my new work comrades at the kitchen.’’
Xiulan giggled at that before following Jack towards the service counters. She was both surprised and happy when she saw the spread available at the salad bar.
‘’Fresh lettuce and sweet peppers? It must have cost a fortune to bring these up from the surface.’’
‘’Don’t forget that this ship has extensive hydroponics gardens, Xiulan. These were probably grown aboard. If they really can provide fresh produces during the whole trip, then it will make wonders for the morale. However, I doubt that they could produce meat or fish on the ship: raising animals requires a lot of feed grain and would not be economical here in space. Beside, modern freeze dried preservation techniques are good enough to keep meat for many years.’’
‘’What about dairy products, milk, butter?’’
‘’Uh, dairy products are a bit more complicated to keep, although ultra-high-heated milk stays good for months. Well, let’s see what is on the hot menu.’’
Going to the service counter of the kitchen, set at one extremity of the open area cafeteria, the couple grabbed sets of utensils and trays and looked at the large containers of food lined up on top of the steam table. Jack nodded his head in approval on seeing that there was both beef and pork on the menu, along with mashed potatoes, rice and stir-fried vegetables. He then smiled to the cook standing behind the steam table and passed his right arm over for a shake.
‘’Hi! I’m Jack Sommers and I will be working with you in the kitchen.’’
The man, a jovial looking one wearing the traditional white apron and hat of a cook, returned his smile while solidly grabbing his hand and shaking it.
‘’Raoul Bonnet, at your service! We won’t mind an extra pair of hands here: there is a lot to do, as we don’t only prepare and serve the food: we also help inspect and store away the vegetables, eggs and poultry meat produced on the ship.’’
‘’We raise chickens on the ship?’’
‘’And turkeys and rabbits as well. We don’t raise enough of them to be able to serve fresh meat every day, but it will help a lot in varying the menu from freeze-dried meat. We however produce enough eggs to provide them to all at breakfast.’’
‘’That’s great! Oh, I nearly forgot to present you my wife, Xiulan. She will be working as a bar attendant.’’
‘’Pleased to meet you, Madam Sommers.’’ said the French cook while shaking hands with Xiulan. He then pointed the various containers on the steam table. ‘’So, what can I serve you? We have roast beef with peppercorn sauce, pork cutlets and chicken fried rice.’’
‘’The chicken fried rice looks really good, Mister Bonnet: I will have some.’’ replied Xiulan.
‘’And I will have the roast beef, Raoul.’’
‘’Good choices!’’ said Bonnet while starting to serve them. ‘’Right now we are still regularly receiving arrivals of fresh meat and dairy products via shuttles, but we will have to switch to freeze-dried rations a couple of weeks after our departure for Mars. But don’t worry about the quality or diversity of these freeze-dried rations. Our chief cook, Alfredo Caldi, who is renown across Europe, has concocted the various menus we will eat and prepared them himself for preservation in communal size freeze-dried bags. We will be eating like kings during our mission.’’
‘’Hell, that will definitely be better than the sad, unappetizing stuff the early astronauts had to eat.’’
‘’You got that right! Alfredo told me to pass the word to you that you won’t need to start working in the kitchen until tomorrow morning, so you will have this evening and night free for yourself.’’
‘’Thank him for that on my part, Raoul. By the way, is he a demanding boss? I heard a few scary things about European chefs and their huge egos.’’
‘’Naah, not with Alfredo! He is an easy man to work with and is actually quite a funny guy, but don’t overcook the pastas.’’
The trio laughed briefly at Raoul’s joke, then Jack and Xiulan left the service counter with their food and went next to the beverage counter and the salad bar before going to sit in one of the booths that was still unoccupied. Jack looked for a moment at the display screen/false window just beside him, contemplating the recorded images of the road traffic passing in front of the ‘dinner’, before attacking his food. His beef proved to be excellent and he smiled to Xiulan, who was eating her fried rice with gusto.
‘’I think that we will have a good time aboard this ship, Xiulan. Also, with the salary bonuses for deep space service that we are getting both, we will be able to save a nice bundle, maybe enough to buy a house on our return.’’
His wife was thoughtful for a moment before replying in a hesitant tone.
‘’What if we continue serving on this ship on its following missions? It cost tens of billions of dollars to build and launch. Surely, it will not be scrapped after only one trip to Mars. We could simply take some vacation on Earth between missions, if we really like working aboard the FRIENDSHIP. To be frank, conditions on Earth are going to continue deteriorating and the prices for houses built on safe grounds keep shooting up sky-high. In a few years, the real estate market will be so expensive that only millionaires will be able to afford detached houses of their own. And I am not even factoring yet the mounting pollution levels and the social troubles that are growing around the planet. Do we really want us to have children and then raise them in some overcrowded, low-level and overpriced apartment building?’’
Jack put down his fork, alarmed at that turn in the conversation.
‘’Don’t tell me that you don’t want us to have children anymore, Xiulan?!’’
‘’That’s not what I am saying, Jack. What I am saying is that we should use to the maximum the opportunities offered by working on a long term basis aboard this spaceship.’’
‘’And when would we have children then?’’
‘’How about now, on this ship? During my selection process and training, I was told that pregnancies would be allowed during the trip, so that the project managers could learn if procreating in a future Mars colony is feasible and risk-free.’’
‘’But, would it be risk-free, Xiulan? There is this business about space radiations that could cause malformations and mutations in fetuses.’’
‘’I asked a doctor in Vandenberg about that and he told me that, with the amount of anti-radiation shielding that the FRIENDSHIP possesses, we won’t be exposed to more radiations than we would normally be exposed to on Earth. Things may be different on Mars, but none of us is due to go down on Mars…at least on this trip.’’
Jack was silent for a moment as he weighed his wife’s arguments.
‘’Okay, I can see the merist in your arguments. So, you really would like us to try to have a child on this trip? When would you like us to make a first try?’’
Xiulan smiled to her husband while covering his right hand with her left hand and caressing it.
‘’How about tonight, Jack?’’