I’m currently in what’s known as the Tartan Field. It’s a network of wells and pipelines, an underwater industrial estate. Until we’ve got an alternative sorted, we need places like this. North Sea oil drives our economy. It heats our homes, fuels our cars, paves our roads. It’s used in life jackets, tampons, ibuprofen. It’s even used to build artificial hearts—it literally keeps hearts beating.
“You ready for this, aye Deano?” asks Hamish, the supervisor on the dive control team. He speaks to me via headphones, and he can see what I’m doing through a camera on my helmet. He’s watching Rich too. Today Rich is diver one and I’m diver two. Cal is in the bell. We’re working the morning shift, and once we get back to the chamber, the other team will go down.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I say. I’ve been working for ten hours straight, and I’ve just finished fixing a pump which feeds oil to a platform over ten miles away. Now I’m retreating while it’s powered up to five thousand volts.
“Make sure you don’t stand on any connectors as you move back,” Hamish says. “Nice and easy.”
Walking along the seafloor takes time. It’s like wading through treacle, but treacle filled with sharp obstacles which constantly threaten to shred your kit. The most important part, the part that you mustn’t break, under any circumstances, is the umbilical. Like a human umbilical, the cord is twisted to prevent tangles. You need to use the cord to find your way back to the bell, but even more critical than that, you need it to keep you alive.
“That’s it. Not long until you can go up for your dinner,” says Hamish.
It’s been a while since I got to witness a pump being tested, and my breath catches in my throat as I wait for it to happen. I imagine the entire North Sea crackling with electricity as I’m fried like a fillet of fish.
Eventually, Hamish speaks. “Nice one, Deano. That’s all sorted . . . Deano?”
Looks like I’ll live to see another day. I start to retrace my steps. “Yeah?”
“That’s all sorted.”
“Oh, right, sorry. I’m still here. That’s great, Hamish. Cheers for all your help.” Normally I’m delighted after a job well done, but today feels like an anticlimax. Something is gnawing at me. It continues to gnaw at me as I enter the diving bell, and it gnaws at me as I take off my helmet, and it gnaws at me as we head back to the saturation chamber, and it gnaws at me as I eat a large portion of lamb stew.
After dinner, I lie on my bunk, and I think about James. He’s sent me two text messages, but I’ve yet to reply. I try not to phone too often, partly because of my helium voice, but also because of the lack of privacy in the chamber. It’s not like you can whisper sweet nothings in a place like this.
I’d never used the L-word before I met James. With him, I found it strangely easy. It helped that he had his own life so sorted: his business, his surfing, his board game nights. He didn’t need me to complete him; he was complete already. He once told me that I was free to leave whenever I wanted. It was about a year into our relationship. I was getting itchy feet. Not because I wanted to be with anyone else—I just missed my freedom. There’s a euphoria that comes with breaking off a relationship. A chance to reinvent yourself, to begin your life anew. I was starting to crave that, and James sensed it.
“I only want to be with you if it’s what you want,” he told me as we walked home from the pub one night, drunk on an ale called Photon Trails. “If you want to break up with me, I won’t put up a fight.”
Feeling free to leave made me want to stay. It made me feel free to love.
Two years on, love and freedom don’t seem quite so connected. I’m deeply attached to James. I can’t imagine what my life would look like without him. So, if I wanted to up sticks one day and head off to, say, Tibet, I’d obviously need to take him into consideration. And if I wanted to go farther afield . . .
Because the truth is, I know what it is that’s been gnawing at me.
Mars.
I can’t get it out of my head. Even now I’m here, on my dive. It’s every adventure I’ve ever wanted, all wrapped up in one mission. All the training, the physical and psychological preparation. And then, at the end of it all, shooting off the face of Terra Mater, never to return. The idea is so appealing that it makes me want to cry with relief.
“Yo, Deano?” It’s Rich. He’s peering at me from the bunk above. “You look stoned. Y’all right?”
“Just thinking.”
“Ugh, you don’t wanna do that. Not while you’re in here. ’Scuse my feet.” Rich climbs down from his bunk and heads off to the toilet.
While he’s gone, I look at the Mars Project website on my phone.
It’s not that I’m worried that James would forbid me from entering the competition. For a start, it’s so unlikely the mission will happen. But there’s a slim possibility it might. And my love for James makes that possibility feel impossible. It’s not the green fields or the deep blue sea that I’d miss. It’s James.
I scour the competition guidelines yet again. Something that’s been playing on my mind is this: to get through to the next round, entrants must write an essay entitled “Why I Want to Be One of the First People to Live on Mars.” It sounds like a school project for ten-year-olds. How do you know if someone’s cut out to be an astronaut based on some dumb essay? Get them to tackle a military assault course, or put them in a centrifuge, but writing words?
Google tells me that the Dutch organisation is funded by a few anonymous private investors—that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence, either. Who’s backing this thing? And why does the Mars Project exist in the first place? To take a giant leap across the solar system? Or to put money in pockets that remain firmly on Earth? I can’t help but come to the conclusion that the competition is a joke. A scam.
It’s a shame, because if I were to enter it, I know I’d be in with a chance. Saturation divers and astronauts are not dissimilar. We’re both okay with being locked in confined spaces. We both work in dangerous environments, relying on complex machinery to keep us alive. We both know how it feels to be far away from home. And I’m sure you’d get used to missing people. The brain adjusts, I imagine.
9
“Surface,” I say. “I’m ready for the checklist.”
“Let’s start with communications. Diver helmet? One, two, three, four, five. How do you read me?”
“Five by five.”
“Auto-generator? One, two, three, four, five. How do you read me?”
The safety checks go on like this for about half an hour. It’s imperative to make sure everything is just so, and although I won’t be going into the water today, my role as bellman is essential. I’m responsible for the other two. Any problems, it’s down to me to keep us safe. I haven’t brought the malachite Anouk gave me into the diving bell, and of course I don’t believe in lumps of enchanted rock, but still I find myself making a fist, imagining I’m holding it for a moment.
“Okay, pal,” says Hamish on the intercom, once the checks are done. “I’ll call the divers in.”
“Right, boys,” I say, once Cal and Rich have joined me. “Let’s get you sorted.” I help them put on their gear, making sure they’re safe and warm. We all become mothers when it’s our turn in the bell. The thought briefly flashes through my mind that I might be pregnant now, and one day the cluster of cells inside me will need me to dress her like this.