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Previously: as suspected, after running some diagnostics, Aiden is unable to find anything wrong with the battery control heater. Later that evening, Aiden and Lana quietly crossed a line neither had dared approach before.
October 2056
Pieter shovelled the remaining porridge into his mouth and stood up. He collapsed the chair he had been sitting on and slid it into the storage compartment under the bunks. From the toilet across the aisle came the sound of rushing air, followed by gurgling, a few seconds later Brant emerged.
“That feels better,” he said, with a satisfied look.
“Ready to make a move?” said Pieter.
“I am now that lot has moved. I’ll go take the blinds down.”
Brant headed to the rover’s cockpit at the other end of the aisle. The windows had all been blanked with shades to keep the perpetual Antarctic summer sunlight out while they slept.
“Zawadi?” called Pieter. She leaned out of the shower area, toothbrush in her mouth and a white dribble down her cheek.
“Two minutes,” she replied.
“Alright, I’ll check in with the hab and let them know we’ll be on the move shortly.”
Pieter went over to his bunk and picked up his tablet from where he had left it on the bed. He opened it and put a call in to Aiden on the expedition loop.
“Morning, we’re just packing up breakfast here. We’ll be on the move shortly,” he said cheerfully. He squeezed against the bunk as Brant came past carrying the folded up blinds from the cockpit.
“Roger,” said Aiden croakily. “We’ll be watching you. Check in when you get to the first drill site.”
“You all right? You sound terrible.”
“Yeah, just didn’t sleep that well.”
“We all slept like logs. The bunks in these rovers are actually pretty comfortable.”
There was a cough which muted part way through, then Aiden came back on sounding a lot better.
“That’s good. Be careful, and I’ll keep an eye on things from here.”
“Ok,” said Pieter, and cut the connection.
Brant brushed past him again. “I’ll start folding the panels away.”
All the screens in the rover cockpit were dark, apart from the central screen, which showed some basic environmental systems indications. Brant tapped an icon in the corner of that screen as he slid himself into the left seat. The other screens came to life and the central screen changed to a more comprehensive display of the rover systems. An overview showed the four solar arrays deployed. One on each side of the rover and one on each side of the auxiliary trailer.
Although the rover had a range of approximately 1,000 km and up to 2,000 km with the auxiliary trailer, both the rover and trailer were equipped with two large solar arrays on each side. They would not replenish a whole day’s driving, but even during the Antarctic summer these could provide a meaningful top-up during the “night”. With the panels extended the rover and trailer looked like some ungainly reptile warming itself in the sun.
Brant tapped each of the solar arrays in turn and selected “retract”. The rigid edges of the panels deflated and the cables strung alongside were slowly retracted into the rover. This pulled the spindle at the end of the panel and it began rolling up like a gigantic roll of paper.
Pieter took the right-hand seat in the cockpit and Zawadi settled herself in the jump seat behind Pieter as the last of the panels indicated it was fully retracted. Brant flicked through various external camera views to confirm this.
“Good to go.” he looked over at Pieter and Zawadi.
“Let’s hit the road then,” replied Pieter.
Zawadi nodded affirmatively. “I’ll start checking out the drone.”
Brant pressed his accelerator pedal and the rover moved off imperceptibly smoothly. He engaged the speed-hold at twenty kilometres per hour. “Let me know when you are ready for your test flight.”
Zawadi clipped her tablet into a mount in front of her. Then she took out what looked like an old-fashioned game controller. She tapped away on the screen.
“Just running through self-test now. Can you open the roof so it can get a GPS fix.”
Brant reached over and tapped a control on the central console. On the roof of the rover, a bi-fold door opened, revealing the drone waiting patiently in its bay.
A tilt rotor with a wingspan of approximately one metre, it could be contained without having to fold wings or blades. The long fuselage had two sets of straight wings in a canard configuration. At the tip of each wing was a five-bladed propeller. As the drone sat in its bay, these were currently rotated up in the vertical position. The shorter front wings prevented the rear propellers from being affected by prop-wash when they all rotated to the horizontal flight position. The increased velocity of the air also helped the rear wing to generate lift.
“The wind has dropped quite a bit from last night, so you should have no problem launching and recovering that thing while we are moving,” said Pieter.
“I think Zawadi could have handled that anyway, don’t you?”
“Yes. But we’ve only got one drone remember.”
Zawadi concentrated on the various system checks which were scrolling through on the screen in front of her.
“I think I prefer the conditions the way they are today,” she said without looking up. “I’m just going to check the visuals and we should be good to go.”
She took out a VR headset and placed it on her head, the goggles resting on her forehead. After tapping a couple of commands, she pulled it down over her eyes. As she moved her head around the camera in the nose of the drone gimballed to match the movement. She felt dizzy instantly and broke out into a cold sweat.
“Ugh.”
“You Ok back there?” asked Pieter.
“Yeah, these things just always make me feel ill to begin with.” She held her head still for a second, then moved it around more sedately. “Ok, I’m good to go now.”
Pieter tapped a few commands on the screen in front of him and brought up a video feed from the drone. “Ok Zawadi, off you go.”
Zawadi gently eased the stick on the left of the controller forward. This essentially functioned as the collective control in a helicopter, so pushing it forward was the same as pulling up on the collective. Above her, the drone’s four propellers began to spin. She eased it forward more and the drone gracefully rose from its hangar on top of the rover. With its stabilisation algorithms turned on the drone was actually quite easy to fly. It matched the rover’s speed, hovering above the bay it had launched from. Zawadi moved the stick on the right of the controller forward and the drone pitched forward, beginning to overtake the rover. Brant and Pieter both craned their necks to see it through the perspex roof of the rover cockpit.
Zawadi pitched the drone forward some more and pressed the translation button on the controller. On the tips of the wings, the four rotors rotated forward. As the forward speed increased and the wings began to produce more and more lift, the motors rotated further forward. The drone’s stability augmentation system expertly coordinated the simultaneous increase in forward speed and lift from the wings. After about ten seconds, the transformation was complete and the drone was cruising out over the ice in front of the rover at about twenty metres and fifty kilometres per hour.
As Zawadi moved the stick, the drone gracefully banked left and right. She increased the speed and pulled up into a zoom climb before circling back behind the rover, diving and buzzing the cab on the right next to Pieter. It was exhilarating to fly. Zawadi felt a brief pang of guilt - was she showboating a bit too much?
“Looks like you’re having fun there,” said Pieter.
“This thing flies just like the simulator.”
“Just remember if you crash it, you can’t just press reset.”
“I’ll head out a few kilometres ahead of the rover and start a grid search, see if there is anything out there.”
“Don’t go too far either side of our course. We want to make it to the drill site on schedule.” Pieter scrolled up the map display in front of him. “We can deviate a little if there is anything really interesting to pick up but I don’t want to go kilometres out of the way.”
“I’ll just do a quick check with the sensors. We’ll have a much better chance of finding meteorites once we get to the areas of blue ice.”
Zawadi engaged the drone’s autopilot and put it in heading, speed and altitude hold. Then she lifted her headset and selected an area of the map on the navigation page in front of her and set up a grid search. She pushed “Activate” and the drone headed off to start its grid search of the area ten kilometres ahead of the rover.
Brant squinted at the empty horizon. “You know it’s funny you hear people talking about coming to the Antarctic to hunt for meteorites, but they don’t fall here any more than they do anywhere else on the planet.”
“Yeah, I wonder how often people walk past them without ever realising. You’ve probably stepped on dozens of them,” said Pieter.
Zawadi leaned forward so she could get a better view out the front of the rover. “I’m not sure there are that many around.”
“Isn’t it something like 17,000 fall to Earth each year?”
“Yes, but Earth is a pretty big place, covered with a lot of water,” said Zawadi.
“You’re right. Hopefully, these areas of blue ice we’re heading to concentrate them like they supposedly do.”
“Scientists have been coming here for almost one hundred years,” said Zawadi. “It’s a pretty well understood process. The meteorites get trapped in the ice and then when the ice flow is forced to the surface they are exposed, in areas like we are heading to.”
“I’m glad you stayed awake in those geology classes, Zawadi. I found it a real struggle,” said Pieter.
They continued on in silence.
“There really is a whole lot of nothingness out here, isn’t there,” said Brant after a while as he peered out to the horizon.
“Magnificent desolation,” replied Pieter, quoting Buzz Aldrin’s description of the Moon.
“There’s nowhere like this on the entire planet. It’s quite incredible,” said Zawadi. There was a chime from her console. “Didn’t pick up anything interesting on the search, bringing the drone back in now. I’ll just do an auto-land.”
“Roger,” said Brant.
“You know the most incredible thing about this place is there is absolutely no sign of humans being here. I was watching that feed from the drone and it must have searched an area of what…”
“One hundred square kilometres,” interrupted Zawadi.
“Right. One hundred square kilometres,” continued Pieter, “and there was not one sign of human existence.” He turned around in his seat to face Brant and Zawadi. “Can you imagine what it must have been like for ancient settlers to leave the first footsteps in a place? To look at a vast open stretch of land and stake it out. There’s nowhere left like that anymore. How incredible that must have felt.”
“Except here. And that’s protected by treaty,” said Brant.
“Yes, but we get to be those pioneers on the next great frontier.”
Brant looked across at Pieter. “You ok? I’m worried you are about to break out into a song or something.”
Zawadi chuckled. “And you know the best thing? Out in the Solar System, there are no indigenous people that we can end up taking advantage of.”
“Yes. Well, we all know how that worked out for Earth’s indigenous people,” said Pieter.
There was a soft thud from above them on the roof. “Drone has landed,” said Zawadi. “Just give me a second and I’ll make sure it’s secure.” She tapped away. “Ok, you can close the doors now.” Brant pushed the key on his panel to close the doors and flicked to a camera on the roof to watch them close.
Zawadi took the headset off her head and put it back in its bag. “You know, three million years ago, the earliest humans evolved, probably in the Rift Valley. Basically my home, where I grew up in Nairobi. They then spread from Africa throughout the world. Years later they returned, a very different people, and plundered the continent for its resources and its people. When we spread throughout the Solar System and evolve, I wonder if our descendants will do the same thing to Earth?”
“Well, maybe we’ll get it right his time,” said Pieter.
If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.
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Elseware
Thanks for reading the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. Apologies, this is a few days late. School holidays and life have just got in the way of writing recently. The next week’s episode will likely be a bit behind schedule as well.
We are approaching an exciting part of the story, so I’ll do my best to get the publishing schedule back on track.
Have a great week.
Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.
Alex
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