‘Are vents something we need to worry about?’ I asked. I found one of my own, a small, steaming hollow leading to depths unknown.
‘No,’ Elena said. ‘We want vents, within reason and at a safe distance. Think of them like a pressure valve.’
‘Yeah,’ Jack added. ‘Something without holes might pop.’
‘And no one wants that,’ Chikondi said.
‘No one wants that.’
Visual check complete, we brought out the auger to check the ice’s thickness, to make sure that it would hold our craft for an extended period. Green lights all around. At last, it was time for the fun part.
Inflatable habitat modules are one of my favourite inventions. The Merian comes equipped with two of them – one for the greenhouse, one for the clean lab – each attaching to an airlock on the side of the capsule. They nearly double our living space, but pack away into containment units about half the size of a small car. All we have to do is remove the storage covers, roll out the nigh-indestructible fabric, hit a button, and watch them go.
Even with the modules extended, the space within our habitat is roughly that of a spacious single-family home. You might think that spending years in such a dwelling might start to feel claustrophobic, but consider the fact that ours is the only human home – the only building at all – on any world we travel to. Even the most rural humans can’t understand what it means to be standing on an entire planet that has no cities, no streets, no artificial structures at all. If you’ve been lucky enough to go to a wildlife preserve or some other wide-open space, you might have a glimmer of what that means. The absence of machine sounds. The awesome, fragile humility of knowing you’re the only human around for miles. But even in such places, even up remote mountains or on the longest backpacking trips, you know that somewhere out there, there’s a road. There’s a ranger station. There’s a hotel with a bathtub and a breakfast buffet.
Not so on Aecor. Not anywhere off Earth. As of yet, we have found no other life forms that build cities or machines. When standing on one of these quieter worlds, you know that the entire sphere, in every direction, is wilderness. Go too far from your lander, and your surroundings quickly remind you that you’re only an animal, and that there’s a reason our forbears invented tools and walls.
Faced with such enormity, I find the close quarters of the Merian to be a massive comfort. When you spend day after day after day doing fieldwork in an environment of endless expanse, the most welcome sight in the world is a snug bunk behind a locked door.
I enlisted my crewmates in monitoring the module inflation with me. We took up posts, watching every crease and corner for hidden tears.
‘I love these so much,’ Jack said, watching with satisfaction as the marshmallowy cylinders puffed themselves up. I, too, enjoyed the sight, but I was even more eager for what came next: unpacking our toys.
Have you ever been camping? If so, when you bought your first batch of gear, did you have a moment where you laid it all out in front of you and marvelled at the smorgasbord of clever little bits? The tiny tinderbox? The quick-drying towel? The pop-out kitchenware? The pocket-sized tool that contained a magnifying glass and three knives and a fish scaler you’d never use? That is how I feel every single time we set up our surface labs. Storage space is at a premium in any spacecraft, and being able to fully kit out multi-purpose research facilities obviously requires a lot of stuff. But this need is handily met aboard the Merian, which boasts a cargo hold crammed with a treasure trove of scientific necessities. Microscopes, thermometers, altimeters, light sensors, camera traps, pH probes, turbidity tubes, handheld sonar, ovens, quadrats, shovels, sample dishes, 3D printers, tweezers, molecular scanners, core samplers, seismic monitors, wildlife blinds, tape measures, audio recorders, aerodrones, hydrodrones, gloves, masks, tags, slides, and more goggles than you can shake a stick at, all as lightweight and compact as the best minds on Earth could make them, all securely stowed away in perfect crates with perfect labels in perfect rows.
It is immensely satisfying.
Modules deployed, we went back inside and unpacked our bounty, forming an industrious bucket brigade. ‘Greenhouse first?’ Chikondi asked.
‘Lab first,’ Elena said.
‘Aw,’ he replied. The clean lab was the bigger task, but he was eager to begin the business of growing vegetables. You might think this was a pragmatic desire – radiation alone doesn’t give us all the nutrients we need to survive, and the sooner we start seedlings, the sooner we get snacks. But no, Chikondi just wanted to start playing with plants, just as I knew Elena was itching to collect steam from the vents, just as Jack wanted to go on a hike to search for rocks. Me, I was already in my happy place. Landing had worked, the suits worked, the modules worked, the perfect crates were being unpacked. In order to do science, you need tools, shelter, and a means to get where you’re going. I was responsible for all of these. I was building a trellis where good work would grow. There was nothing I wanted more than that, nothing that brought me more pride.
‘Do you miss coffee?’
I asked this of Jack as he awoke beside me. We’d moved his cot into my cabin the night before, as we do sometimes. Or vice versa. Or not at all.
Jack considered as he blinked at the painted metal ceiling. ‘Nah,’ he said, scratching his stubble. His answer wasn’t surprising in the slightest. Jack doesn’t miss having to eat throughout the day. Back on Earth, he was always the sort of walking disaster who would eat heartily – prodigiously – when you put food in front of him, but would otherwise neglect it entirely, getting lost in work or play until the onset of a roaring headache and a foul mood reminded him to shove a protein bar into his face so he could keep going. Of all of us, he had the easiest time letting go of the contentment of a full belly. For Jack, adopting an alternative means of sustenance was liberation. He couldn’t wait to be free of the need to stop for lunch.
I got up and got dressed. Jack stretched like a cat, folding his arms behind his head, savouring his simple pillow as if he were in a fine hotel.
‘It’s so still,’ I said, peeking out the porthole. Ice stretched unendingly around us, barren and beautiful. ‘Good day for anybody who wants to find some rocks.’
There’s nothing in existence Jack loves with more ardent passion than rocks, except for dirt, especially dirt that has become rock, and especially if that rock has fossils within. He nodded approvingly at my comment, but made no motion to end his dozing.
There was a period in our life together when I would’ve pestered him to get up, asked him if he knew what time it was. Those days have long passed. I know how a morning goes for Jack. He’ll lie there until the last possible second, saunter into the lab with all the urgency of arriving at Sunday brunch, then do work so good that it doesn’t matter what time of day it happens in. Jack is a swagger, a wink, a final aced even though he’s never been to class, a joint smoked in bed after a day in the field, a rock climbed and an ocean swum. He knows he’s good at his job and just flat-out good-looking, and he uses both to get away with murder. The only thing more infuriating than that is how much of a sucker I am for it.
I looked at myself in the mirror and rubbed my scalp. The shave I’d given myself wasn’t particularly even. I picked up my tablet from the cabinet nearby, and glanced over the day’s schedule. ‘You know we’ve got to file check-ups today, right?’ I asked. The torpor system keeps tabs on our health, but you can’t really tell if your internal systems are chugging along as they should be until they’re getting some normal use. After we make camp and get settled, full physicals are the next order of business.