Hello, Earthlings.” Prime likes the videos the crew practices making for the general public to be a little playful. The science must be made accessible to a general audience, and shown to be interesting and exciting. Additionally, the recordings must have a personal tone.
“As you can see”—Yoshi opens his arms—“I’m in the lower level of Primitus. At this moment, upstairs in the Hab, Sergei is working a problem on his spacesuit gloves and Commander Helen is arranging the timetable for sol-morrow. I’m down here customizing our Dust Filtration System so that it can function even more effectively!”
Yoshi is pleased with his work. The DFS has not, in truth, been functioning effectively. They’ve been tracking dust all over the Hab.
“As you’ve seen,” Yoshi says into the camera, “our spacesuits can be docked to the exterior lower level of Primitus. Keeping the suits outside means we can crawl in and out of them right here from the EVA prep room. That leaves all the Martian dust—what we call fines—out on the planet, where it belongs, and not in here, where it can be destructive to equipment and our lungs.”
The word fines is not very good. Yoshi would like to substitute with the word brume. The dust surrounds one like a mist or fog, only not damp, of course. A dry brume.
It is cold in the lower level of the Hab and, to conserve energy, dimly lit. He is physically very tired. The first week of Mars has been wonderfully demanding and they are all sore and fatigued. The tools and instruments they use during EVAs have been adjusted to mimic the way they would feel on Mars, but physics is physics and a large object is a large object. Also, working in compression jumpsuits, spacesuits, weighted boots, and pressurized gloves is demanding in ways his Primitus exercise routine could not fully anticipate. They are forced to move slowly on the surface.
“Now, as you saw”—Yoshi smiles at the screen—“we can also egress from Primitus by using one of the two hatches on either side of this EVA prep room. This is useful for when we need to take out or bring in equipment. The only trouble is, anything we bring in from Mars, including ourselves, will be covered with those fines.”
The dust is on his tongue. In his ears. No penetralia is safe from it. He has found Martian brume on his scrotum.
Yoshi moves through the EVA room, crisscrossed now by his system of dangling hoses. “The dust filtration system does a pretty good job of cleaning us and our equipment,” he says. “But it’s been getting quite the workout, and we like to be very thorough in our cleaning.” Yoshi holds up a nozzle end. “This functions just like a vacuum cleaner back home.” He demonstrates on his arm.
The fines are slightly more reddish than you would expect from Utah, and have an iron smell. A virtually-environment-obscured Prime employee must be standing by the airlock with some kind of bellows, or following them around silently. Perhaps Prime is delivering the ersatz fines by drone.
“It is a little like getting a massage,” Yoshi says, running the nozzle over his head. He and Sergei had both buzzed their hair down to their scalps yester-sol. “As you can see, this works well with my new haircut!”
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“SUCCESS?” HELEN ASKS when Yoshi returns to the upper tier and the Science/Lab wedge, where his crewmates are finishing the sol’s tasks. Yoshi acknowledges that the problem has been sufficiently worked.
“You are the Michelangelo of duct tape,” Helen says. “I’m sure it’s gorgeous.”
Yoshi seats himself at the communal table and reads through his next job. Sol-morrow, Yoshi will be recording an “Astronomy from Mars” video. Prime has already sent a prepared script, but he will take thirty minutes in his evening schedule to personalize and improve upon this.
The romantic in Yoshi has always appreciated the fact that Mars has no visible North Star. It points not at Polaris, as Earth does, but at a position in the sky that aligns neither with Deneb in Cygnus, nor Alderamin in Cepheus, but at some midway point too dim to have a name. You could say that the planet named for the God of War points at darkness.
Yoshi cannot conduct his lecture while actually looking up into a Martian night. It was—will be—too cold on Mars at night for the astronauts to be safely out of the Hab or Rover. They have been allowed to stay on an EVA only long enough to see a blue Martian sunset, the dust of the planet scattering the light just around the star. It had been the first sight that had given him a genuine taste of how thrilling it all might be.
? ? ?
YOSHI TELLS HIMSELF that the astronomy lecture is a good assignment. The more opportunities he has to demonstrate to Prime that he is a good communicator and spokesperson, that he has charisma and likability, the better. Sergei, and especially Helen, have had more time and occasion to build public platforms and brands.
The view of the stars on Mars is similar to what the stars look like to a North American Earth dweller, although their movements appear different. It’s really the moons of Mars that are the most unusual, and the focus of his lecture. Phobos and Deimos. Fear and Terror.