Pilgrims

“Where are they?” Commander Sterne Towers spoke tersely as his finger jabbed the button on the console. “What’s the matter?” Karen Billet asked, squinting at the monitor out of habit. Then she remembered that the displayed image was not live video but static images of terrain mapped years ago. “These coordinates are not correct. Somewhere east. I’m plotting it now,” Sterne said. The map jumped to a new location and displayed the actual landing site. “Where is that?” asked Nick Vasler, but Karen was already sliding aside a panel on the desk for the pop up keyboard. She grabbed the 3-D joystick and zoomed out until they could see Olympus Mons on the display. Far to the west, it was the intended destination of their roving robots. Their programmer plopped herself down at one of the command module workstations like it was a beanbag chair and worked to get the data she needed. The software currently dominant at that station automatically reconfigured the virtual buttons on the monitor. “Inside Innsbruck Crater?” Nick read from the screen. “That’s a long haul from where they should be,” Sterne said, slamming his hand on the console. “Now what? They need to be at our landing site. Those stupid machines. We can’t have them stuck inside a crater.” “It is not their fault,” Karen said defensively. “The radar just looks at altitude, not where it’s going to land -- you know that.” “I know, I know. Can they get out?” “Hey, it’s not a big deal. Look, Innsbruck is big and soft. See here?” Nick zoomed in on the map. “It has an erosion point on the southern rim leading down to this wash here.” He pointed, his finger adding more smudges to the screen. “They may have no problem getting out of that crater. Anyway, we’ll know the problem when we see the landing sequence. Earth must have it figured out by now too so I’m sure we’ll be getting a message from them soon.” Nick had designed much of the mechanical portion of the rovers, and was confident in their abilities. “Great. It’s their dime, but I have to get us landed safely at Pavonis Mons.” “I know, but it’s okay,” Karen answered in a soothing tone. “Weather data from them would have been nice, but we can get that from orbit just before we touch down.” “Wind storms are not a daily occurrence but some areas there can be pretty rocky.” “They were told not to do anything major until we got there anyway. Just diddle around Olympus until we gave them some real work to do. The instruments on board the Shepherd should be able to fill in the gaps on the fly.” “Yeah, right,” Nick added optimistically. “What say we just tell the robots to head for our landing zone? They’ve got five weeks to get there before we land anyway. We might as well use the time.” “Just hold it you two. Okay,” Sterne said after a moment’s thought. “Here’s what we’re going to do.” He queried the computer on the communication time to Mars from their present position. Four minutes and eight seconds. “Do you think they’ve done anything yet?” “No,” Karen replied. “They both have a 10-minute system check on touchdown before they leave the pod. But first it takes 30 minutes for the airbags to deflate so the petals can open fully. They’re trained to visually locate themselves first and then map their starting location. They’ll send us a ready signal as they disembark the platform to run through mechanical diagnostics. That will take another 10 minutes or so.” “We have some time,” Nick agreed. “Okay, then we send them a signal to hold position until we look at the landing video and have a roundtable with the full crew,” Sterne decided. “Makes sense, Commander,” Nick answered. While Karen set to the task of coding and transmitting a hold command to the Pilgrims, Nick wandered aft to wake up the other crew members. “Engineers,” Sterne mumbled to himself as he began to write a message to Earth. The next message coming from Earth would simply be an advisory to confirm the data that his ship already had. Sterne Towers, like a theater commander during war, had been assured that he had almost complete discretion when it came to mission decisions. The communications delay time almost demanded it in practice in any case. At 43, he was an ex-Air Force fighter pilot with four regional conflicts under his belt. And as a regular Shuttle pilot with 18 mission commands in space, he understood his responsibility for the lives of the crew and the safety of the ship. He didn’t fully realize it yet but they were Earth’s first emissaries to the stars. One day soon he would make a decision that would set in motion events that would forever change the expansion into space.